Buy Social Canada has been leading on social procurement design, implementation, and advocacy for the past 10 years. Since 2019 we have celebrated Social Procurement Champion Awards to recognize that our leadership also comes from how we support and promote other organizations who create impact in supply chains. As Buy Social Canada’s 10^th anniversary year enters its final quarter, we’re releasing an “Updates from the Marketplace Revolution” blog series to share progress on Social Procurement Champion Award winners from years gone by.

In the first installment, we’re revisiting one of our more unique award winners: the unnamed public servants of the Federal Government.

At the 2022 Buy Social Canada Symposium: Broad New Horizons, we gave the Social Procurement Champion Award to the unnamed public servants of the Federal Government, following two major policy updates that had been over a decade in the making. They were one of three winners we recognized as “organizations who have pushed the realm of possibility and have worked hard to expand to broad new horizons.”

How we got here

The last decade of advocacy and collaboration with the Government of Canada has broadened the realm of possibility and begun to outline the roadmap for a strong social value marketplace in Canada.

Ecosystem building and support

Buy Social Canada founder David LePage was a member of the Social Innovation and Social Finance Co-Creation Steering Group convened by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) from 2016 to 2018. In this Steering Group, David contributed to 12 SI/SF recommendations for “inclusive innovation” that outline key steps needed to create a social value marketplace in Canada.

Buy Social Canada was also a partner in the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Project (S4ES) alongside CCEDNet, Le Chantier de l’économie sociale, the Social Enterprise Institute and the Social Value Lab, funded by ESDC, to help social enterprises start up and grow, sell their products and services, measure their impact, network, and learn best practices in social procurement and social impact measurement.

As S4ES came to an end in 2021, Buy Social Canada was part of advocating for, and participated as an IRP Partner in, the Investment Readiness Program (IRP) from 2022-2024. The IRP was a $100 million investment to support Social Purpose Organizations and ecosystem builders to grow capacity and access social finance.

Social procurement

On the procurement side, following more than a decade of Buy Social Canada relationship building and collaboration with public servants, Canada’s Treasury Board Secretariat issued a Directive on the Management of Procurement in 2021. The Directive enabled Government of Canada purchasers to make decisions based on “best value” rather than lowest price. This directive paved the way for Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC) to adopt the Social Procurement Policy in 2022.

In light of these two major policy advances, we felt it was important to celebrate the unnamed public servants who worked behind the scenes to advance these policies.

When we announced the unnamed public servants as Social Procurement Champion Award winners in 2022, we wrote:

“The people working behind the scenes in the public service can be maligned and ignored, but champions have been able to push social procurement further than political leaders ever have. Since 2016, social procurement appeared in the PSPC mandate letters. We’ve worked with impressive folks who have tirelessly championed social procurement even as they move from role to role and ministry to ministry. In a position that doesn’t allow glory, award, and celebrity, we want to say that we see you, we thank you and the broad new horizons we are exploring and celebrating today wouldn’t be possible without you.”

Watch Emilio Franco from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat accept the award on behalf of the unnamed public servants (Emilio begins speaking at 3 minutes).

Now, PSPC is seeking to increase supplier diversity in procurement, targeting social enterprises, co-operatives, diverse-owned businesses and social purpose businesses. There are at least two pilots currently running to create lists of under-represented suppliers and social enterprises, monitor outcomes and track best practices.

Across Canada, billions of dollars a year are invested into infrastructure and development projects. Community benefits in construction is a growing area of opportunity to leverage social value through project employment and procurement. Buy Social Canada was contracted by ESDC to conduct research into the perception and experience of CBAs across the construction sector. This research indicated we are experiencing a “paradigm shift” in perspectives on CBAs across sectors, and highlighted that this was in part because of an in increase in CBA implementation experience, supported by Federal Government initiatives such as the Community Employment Benefits (CEB) initiative on federally funded infrastructure and development projects.

These milestones, like IRP, the CEB initiative, and the PSPC social procurement pilots, show Canadians that the Government of Canada is advancing on their journey to buy and sell with impact.

What’s still needed

Each year, our Social Procurement Champion Awards acknowledge that there is no final destination on a social procurement journey. We will always seek to improve outcomes, increase impact, and tell great stories. The same is true with our push for the Federal Government to drive further community outcomes from procurement.

While we celebrate the important steps they have taken to implement social procurement and support the larger social innovation/social finance (SI/SF) sector, part of being a champion and working with Buy Social Canada is to acknowledge the journey, and continue to learn and iterate for impact.

Over a decade of mutual respect and values alignment with public servants, we’ve developed a relationship where we honour success, but we also always ask: what’s next, what more can be done, and how can we improve on what we’re already doing?

In the next decade we need to see more consistent, stable support for the social economy sector, and the expansion of supports for the sector beyond siloed streams of activity, and into existing Government of Canada initiatives across departments.

Public servants in the Federal Government continue to champion social procurement and social enterprise, and push initiatives and policy ahead, but there are still many areas where support for social procurement and social enterprise could be improved.

We need to celebrate the successes of past initiatives and find ways to transition this success from individual activities or transactions which result in instability for the sector, to long-term support for a strategic set of programs and activities that revolutionize our ways of working together and transform our communities to meet government objectives.

The dissolution of the Investment Readiness Program (IRP) has negatively impacted the social economy ecosystem in Canada, and the Social Finance Fund alone is not an adequate implementation of the SI/SF recommendations (read more of our advocacy on IRP and on the Social Finance Fund on our blog). All 12 SI/SF recommendations should be implemented.

Supportive programs and access to finance already exists, but it is not currently always accessible to social enterprises. The Government of Canada has a responsibility to ensure that all federally funded small business capacity building and financing programs, especially the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), are inclusive of non-profit social enterprises. See our calls to action and recommendations for BDC accessibility here.

As PSPC implements supplier diversity in procurement we look forward to working with them to ensure that social enterprises are included in pilots and implementation, resulting in increased contracting opportunities with the Federal Government.

Conclusion

Social procurement requires many components to be successful. Champions like the unnamed public servants are instrumental to move organizations forward from within, acknowledging that the journey is an ongoing process.

The Government of Canada has the tools needed to leverage social procurement to support the social enterprise sector and build thriving, inclusive, and resilient Canadian communities. As we move ahead, the Federal Government should continue to reflect on the groundwork that has already been laid and use it to set the path forward. Buy Social Canada looks forward to continuing to support the next 10 years as we continue to push for an accessible and stable policy landscape for social enterprises, and for the implementation of social procurement, including public reporting to continue to celebrate the many great stories of impact.

Take action

• Collaborate with Buy Social Canada to celebrate and highlight each other’s work to government and beyond as a Community Champion.
• Contract us to conduct research that strengthens the sector.
• Join us in Ottawa at the Sustainable Finance Forum on November 28-29, 2024 to amplify these advocacy messages and continue the conversation.
• Subscribe to the Buy Social Canada newsletter to stay up to date on sector news and best practices.