Charlie Grahn has taught Business at Langara College and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He teaches Public Procurement for Supply Chain Canada.More than a decade ago, I found myself enjoying a summer drink on a Vancouver patio with a friend. Partway through, we were joined by a friend-of-my-friend — Mark, who worked in facilities management. We eased into the usual small talk, and I offered the inevitable confession that I worked in public procurement.One beer became two, as they tend to do on a warm afternoon, and eventually the conversation drifted into that warm, truth-serum stage of mild intoxication. Mark leaned in, lowered his voice with theatrical seriousness, and asked the question he’d clearly been waiting to unload, “So… have you ever been offered a bribe?”I wish I had seen the look on my face. People have all sorts of ideas about public corruption, and I was blissfully unaware of these until this encounter..HILL / THOMPSON: Here’s why Calgary City Hall should keep ‘blanket rezoning’.Is that what people think we do in public procurement? That my silver Hyundai Elantra and modest East Van townhouse are just clever covers for a life of clandestine envelopes and smoky backroom dealmaking?“No,” I said. “I don’t even know how that would be possible.” And then — far more soberly than the moment required — I launched into a detailed explanation of processes, controls, and the general impossibility of slipping someone a cartoonish bag of cash about as feasible as stealing the Stanley Park seawall..Yes, I’ve worked on procurements where the requirements seemed a little too perfectly tailored to a specific respondent. But those were usually just people trying to check the boxes of a procurement policy and getting the thing they really needed.And yes, I’ve also seen situations where I suspected proposals were skimmed rather than studied — less evidence of corruption than of someone looking to avoid 40 hours of dense reading.But a bribe? No brown paper bag stuffed with crisp hundreds. No exotic trips. Not even the deluxe, next-level arrangement — some mysterious third-party “loan” for a property purchase with the understanding that the payments might… stop… at some convenient point, without the inconvenience of foreclosure. All seemingly above-board by appearances..BURTON: Ottawa, Alberta’s MOU hands BC a veto, Canada another missed opportunity.In short: disappointingly little intrigue.It’s not because public procurement folks are supernaturally incorruptible. They’re generally a principled bunch, yes — but the real reason is far simpler: everything we do is discoverable. Vendor submissions, evaluation notes, scoring sheets, internal emails, external emails — every scrap of it is potentially the subject of a freedom-of-information request. It’s very hard to run a shadowy influence operation when half your job is writing things you assume might one day appear on the front page of a newspaper.Corruption surely exists in the public realm. It’s just rarely lurking in the painstaking world of RFPs, mandatory criteria, and page-numbered appendices. Nobody with designs on improper influence bothers cobbling together proposal responses, competing against other vendors, and then dutifully performing contractual obligations. That’s too much work..If you’re looking for where the real mischief creeps in, it’s in program spending — the quiet allocation of public money to companies and groups run by people who have no business running anything, except perhaps a lemonade stand. These outfits haven’t tapped capital markets or donations, sometimes for good reason, but they’ve mastered the art of aligning themselves with whatever public-policy objective is currently in vogue: climate action, regional industrial policy, diversity, reconciliation — pick your banner.The strings attached are usually soft, the oversight lighter still, and all of it sails past without ever touching the desk of a procurement person. We’re too busy wrestling with agreements for the network printer maintenance, janitorial contracts, and the procurement equivalent of rotating the tires — important work, yes, but hardly the stuff of cloak-and-dagger intrigue..OLDCORN: ‘Singh Hortons’ has become a national disgrace, no longer ‘Canada’s coffee shop’.Yet, these program dollars are also subject to statutory disclosure requirements. They’re just really hard to decipher because the “exchange value” isn’t the receipt of equipment, materials, or goods, but some vague “public good” that usually accrues over years. No media outlets in Canada have the bench strength to do old-school investigative journalism. In their place, we have political actors who can do the legwork and tip off eager media if something seems suspect. If that fails, we have auditors general and others that dutifully — if somewhat cryptically — highlight seeming abuses of the public trust.The important point is this: These two avenues of public spending are still open to public scrutiny. But that’s in danger of ending.In 2021, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) was amended to prohibit disclosures that “could reasonably be expected to harm the rights of an Indigenous people….” At first glance, that sounds perfectly sensible — who would argue with protecting rights?.But then you look at what the amendment covers. It specifies: (a) cultural heritage (b) traditional knowledge (c) traditional cultural expressions (d) manifestations of sciences, technologies, or culturesAnd suddenly the picture gets a lot murkier. These categories are broad — expansive, even — and so open-ended that it’s hard to know where they begin or end. Sensible in principle, yes, but in practice… not quite as tidy as the proponents would have you believe..QUESNEL: Sacred or sinister? Rethinking religious defences in hate speech.Let me illustrate.In July 2021, Vancouver City Council voted unanimously to rename Trutch Street, a quiet residential stretch in the Kitsilano neighborhood. Just over a year later, on September 30, 2022, the Musqueam Nation formally “gifted” the City a new name in their traditional language: šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street. Catchy! The renaming bylaw was finally enacted on June 17, 2025. Three days later, the new street signs went up.Curious about the process, Vancouver MLA Dallas Brodie filed a FIPPA request for details. The response revealed that the Musqueam had been paid $33,500 to participate. But that wasn’t the real story..The real story began when the City realized it had released the information in violation of the amended FIPPA. In a flurry of bureaucratic backpedalling, officials sent Brodie a commanding letter instructing her not to share the material and to destroy it. She reportedly suggested they “pound sand,” and that’s the only reason we know about it. The incident matters. If something as mundane — and relatively modest — as a $33,500 participation payment can be treated as information that “could reasonably be expected to harm the rights of an Indigenous people,” then the implication is stark: any disclosure involving Indigenous participation can be withheld.That’s a problem..PINDER: The West’s breaking point — how Canada’s emissions policies expose a rigged federation.If that’s the standard, transparency in projects with indigenous involvement — now a feature of almost every major public initiative — becomes effectively impossible. Recent legal developments make this even more consequential. This past summer, the Cowichan decision recognized Aboriginal title to 5.7 km of land in Richmond — an unprecedented acknowledgment in an urban setting. The court held that the province has a duty to negotiate in good faith to reconcile Crown-granted private ownership with Aboriginal title. Last week, a separate ruling held that the automatic granting of mineral claims without consultation breached the Crown’s constitutional obligations. The upshot is that we face a future where real-estate development and resource exploitation will now have some degree of indigenous participation, meaning that it can be excluded from the public sphere.Let’s be clear: this isn’t an indigenous problem.It’s almost certainly a non-indigenous one..British Columbia is full of clever operators — insiders, opportunists, and professional hangers-on — who make their living at the public trough. Real businesses are beyond them; market discipline is too unforgiving. What they need is a Trojan Horse, superficial indigenous branding or nominal partnerships that confer the appearance of authenticity or alignment with indigenous rights, without delivering meaningful involvement or simple tribute payments. These arrangements are low-risk, low-effort, and often little more than decorative. There’s an ugly word for it: Indigi-washing, and it’s rife for public corruption.The opacity doesn’t protect indigenous rights; it protects the people who have perfected the art of extracting value from the public purse without creating any in return. Some “indigenous-backed” resource extraction project fouls the environment? That’s off limits. Budget allocation to the First Nations Health Authority? Nope. Royalty amounts collected by the province are redirected to a Swiss bank account we are told is controlled by an indigenous council? The payments and the destination are not discoverable.These circumstances make transparency more vital, not less.If governments continue treating any indigenous involvement as a reason to withhold information, they aren’t protecting rights. They’re undermining public accountability at precisely the moment when transparency is most needed.In a democracy, no area of public spending — no matter how well-intentioned, sensitive, or historically significant — should be placed beyond scrutiny.Charlie Grahn has taught Business at Langara College and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He teaches Public Procurement for Supply Chain Canada.
