The federal government reported awarding $1.04 billion in contracts to Indigenous businesses in 2024-25, down from $1.24 billion the year before and $1.63 billion the year before that, according to results filed by 95 departments and agencies and published on the federal open government portal. Over the same period, the value of contracts that deputy heads were permitted to set aside from the calculation climbed to $37.01 billion, two and a half times the $14.70 billion excluded in 2023-24.
Ottawa requires every federal organization to direct at least five per cent of the total value of its contracts to Indigenous businesses. Indigenous Services Canada sets out the arithmetic plainly in its reporting: the value awarded to Indigenous businesses (A) is divided by the total value of all contracts awarded (B) less deputy head-approved exceptions (C). The 2024-25 fiscal year was the first in which the target applied to every reporting organization, after a three-year phase-in that began in 2022-23. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is excluded from the data for security reasons.
Adding up the 95 rows in the 2024-25 results file gives $1.04 billion awarded to Indigenous businesses against $57.19 billion in total contract value, or 1.81 per cent. Once the $37.01 billion in exceptions is removed from the denominator, the figure becomes 5.13 per cent, just above the target. The exclusions account for 64.7 per cent of all contract value the 95 organizations reported.
The same arithmetic applied to the 2023-24 file reproduces Indigenous Services Canada’s own published totals to the dollar: $1,241,031,746 awarded, $35.02 billion in total contract value, $14,701,404,695 in exceptions and 6.11 per cent. The department’s report for that year put the 2022-23 figures at $1.63 billion, $33.53 billion, $7.51 billion and 6.27 per cent. Measured against total contract value rather than the adjusted denominator, the Indigenous share has fallen in each of the three years, from 4.87 per cent to 3.54 per cent to 1.81 per cent.
Thirteen of the 95 organizations reported missing the target outright in 2024-25, among them Public Services and Procurement Canada, the government’s central purchasing arm, at 3.16 per cent, National Defence at 2.74 per cent, Parks Canada at 4.79 per cent and the Public Health Agency of Canada at 1.35 per cent. A further 15 organizations that reported meeting the target would have fallen below five per cent had their own exceptions not been subtracted, including the RCMP at 4.26 per cent, Statistics Canada at 4.67 per cent and Correctional Service Canada at 4.42 per cent on unadjusted numbers.
The widest gaps sit in a handful of files. Veterans Affairs Canada reported $878,011 to Indigenous businesses against $730.7 million in total contract value, or 0.12 per cent, and recorded 7.77 per cent after excluding $719.4 million. The Canadian Space Agency reported $2.66 million against $1.65 billion, or 0.16 per cent, and recorded 9.15 per cent after excluding $1.62 billion. Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported $41.6 million against $8.96 billion, or 0.46 per cent, and recorded 6.01 per cent after excluding $8.27 billion.
Fisheries and Oceans’ numbers moved the furthest year over year. The department reported $1.29 billion in total contract value and $504.8 million in exceptions for 2023-24. Twelve months later the first line had grown roughly sevenfold and the second roughly sixteenfold. National Defence, the largest single user of the provision, has seen its exceptions roughly double in each of the three years, from $6.45 billion in 2022-23 to $12.89 billion in 2023-24 and $24.60 billion in 2024-25, and it has reported missing the target in all three.
Indigenous Services Canada flagged the pattern itself a year ago. In its report on 2023-24, the department noted that the value of exceptions had nearly doubled, that there is a positive correlation between the exceptions an organization claims and the final percentage it reports, and that the increase “should be monitored as part of ongoing analysis.” That document remains the department’s most recent government-wide account of the target. The 2024-25 results were posted to the open government portal in March and last modified in July, and carry the standard caution that organizations are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their own submissions and that the files are not revised retroactively.
