BEE-CLEAN INDIGENOUS Clean Spaces. Strong Partnerships. Lasting Impact. George Gordon First Nation Sand Point First Nation Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Cold Lake First Nation Bee-Clean Indigenous connects businesses with trusted Indigenous-owned and Indigenous-partnered companies to deliver quality services while creating meaningful economic opportunities for Indigenous communities. Through our partnership program, clients receive the same exceptional Bee-Clean commercial cleaning services while supporting Indigenous employment and business growth across Canada. contracts in the Canadian market- place. CCIB now has 310 compa- nies participating in PAIR, with 32 certifying or recertifying this year alone — a scale unimaginable to the four people working out of a coach house behind a Toronto land- mark in 1997. None of the people who do this work credit PAIR alone for that shift. Ahenakew is careful to note that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a broader rise in public awareness have done as much as any certification program to move the needle. And it’s Ahenakew who is most insistent that the certificate was never really the point. “The real benefit and opportunity is getting everyone orga- nized, working together and aligned,” he says. “Having that formalized in the accreditation process really drives that within companies.” It’s been 25 years since a nearly insolvent organization bet that corporate behaviour toward Indigenous Peoples could be structured, measured and paid for by its own members rather than government grants. They bet on a winner, and the fruit of their labour — PAIR — has today become a shining example of how to engage business in fair and equitable relations with Indigenous groups and communities. THE FUTURE OF PAIR IN CONVERSATION WITH CCIB PAIR DIRECTOR LUANNE WHITECROW What are your hopes for PAIR as it evolves in the future? Our hope is that it remains the premier standard Indigenous relations program that companies and organizations can use to benchmark their long-term commitment in Indigenous relations. It will help strengthen and establish a better process approach internally within the company and on projects, benchmark a company or organization’s Reconciliation Action Plan, and help crown corporations structure deliverables on their mandates. Building on the value of PAIR, it would be wonderful to see increased participation with government funded agencies that service Indigenous communities, from health sectors, hospitality and IT, to education, media and nonprofits and municipalities. The program would strengthen their Indigenous relations practices and help them meet the Call to Action 92. Are you facing any specific challenges right now and how are you addressing them As priorities change within the economic landscape, fast-tracking projects, this will be an opportunity for companies to take a more proactive process approach internally to prepare their community partners and involve them. The Committed-level framework building process within the PAIR program complements this. With the new emerging dynamic of fast tracking of projects, this signals a need to get First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities partner-ready. The PAIR Committed-level criteria requires companies to embed process approach that requires them to connect with communities on the four PAIR drivers. This is an internal process approach that must be formalized for every company. If companies build effective input and feedback process mechanisms, they will know and understand what their community partners need and that is what strengthens the company’s strategy. To what do you attribute the success of the program? The PAIR program is successful because it helps companies and organizations formalize commitment, strategy and structure in their Indigenous relations practices, and it sets them up for long-term commitment that will allow them to demonstrate results over a period of time. By building this process approach within the company, it’s helping the company do this work internally and extend that commitment and governance to the project side. This work is not possible without the expertise of our CCIB teams that provide support to the PAIR program: the verifiers, PAIR cultural awareness trainers, PAIR facilitators and PAIR adjudicators. They all play a very unique role within the program to make it a success. 16 A CCIB PUBLICATION Fall 2026 PAIR 25TH ANNIVERSARY
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