A) I'm all for letting Canadians decide how best to run Canada, so I will say that my opinion doesn't really matter on how you guys decide to govern yourselves.
B) We actually do something like this in the US in regards to federal contracts. My wife does this work. It's called the 8(a) Set-Aside program. Each federal agency has to give a certain percentage of contracts or its contracting budget to Women-Owned Small Businesses, Minority-Owned Small Businesses, Native Hawaiian-Owned Small Businesses, Native Alaskan-Owned Small Businesses, Native American-Owned Small Businesses, Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, and I am sure there are others. What ends up happening in a lot of cases that a big company finds someone who meets one or more of these categories, helps them start a company, and then partners with them so that they can all help make each other rich. It's something of a dirty game, but that's the game. I have really mixed feelings on it. On one hand, I'm glad that others are being given the opportunity get in the game, creating competition and innovation in the marketplace. On the other, a lot of these small businesses don't seem capable of doing some of the things that they're tasked to do, so it's really just a bigger company pulling the strings behind the scenes to ensure that the project doesn't fail. I bet the same kinds of games end up happening for these Canadians companies when the government seeks to procure work.
