Aaron Joe has been an entrepreneur on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast for 25 years.
He got his start extracting minerals from the earth as a mining contractor, but roughly a decade and a half ago he started to change his perspective on the kind of impact he would like make.
“I wanted to do something a little more that aligned with our values as Indigenous people,” Joe tells Global News. “And I thought, ‘I can help make a change in forestry.’”
Today, Joe is the CEO of Salish Soils, a company operating out of the Sechelt First Nation that takes waste from the B.C. area and repurposes it into soils and compost for farmers and landscapers. He says he sees this as a way of “reclaiming our territory.”
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Joe and his business partners have scaled the company up from four people to 36 employees over the past 14 years, all starting from a “shoestring budget.” He says it took a while to find Salish Soils’ first major investor, someone who believed in the company’s vision of “sustainability and economic reconciliation.”
Exclusion from traditional capital sources has been a historic challenge for First Nations, Inuit and Métis entrepreneurs — particularly those living on reserve — who are looking to start and scale up companies, according to Indigenous company founders and business leaders who spoke to Global News.
Indigenous founders say that improving access to capital for startup businesses and for communities looking to shape their own economic fates is critical to achieving meaningful reconciliation.
Capital challenges date back to the Indian Act
Many of the barriers facing Indigenous entrepreneurs date back to the Indian Act — historic legislation first enacted in 1876 that established the reserves system in Canada alongside other policies aimed at the assimilation of Indigenous peoples.
While many entrepreneurs looking to start a business can rely on financing from a bank if they have collateral like a property to put up against the loan, Joe notes that those living on reserves don’t own their property — marking a significant barrier to accessing capital.
“Usually when you start a business, you have an asset that you can leverage so that you could support a loan or some kind of financing. And being on reserve is going to be a challenge with that,” he says.
Access to capital for Indigenous startups was a major gap identified by Paul Lacerte, founder and chief impact officer of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners.
He tells Global News that institutional and race-based barriers to accessing capital like a lack of collateral are direct consequences of the Indian Act.
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“Indigenous folks are ready, willing and able — and impatient — to be able to take their seat at that economic table,” Lacerte says. “But they need access to patient, flexible capital that’s culturally safe, to be able to scale in a way that makes sense and not sacrifice impact in favour of scale.”
Lacerte and his partners at Raven have taken it upon themselves to invest in Indigenous businesses like Salish Soils in Canada and the United States with an approach that shares the cultural values of the founders themselves.
He says the fund works with founders and partners who want a stake in the “reconciliation economy,” which he says can reframe historic relationships between the financial sector and Indigenous communities.
Rather than capital deployment being “extractive” and “harmful” to Indigenous communities, Lacerte says that by investing in businesses like Salish Soils, Raven can help to “level the playing field” and empower founders to shape their communities in a way more in keeping with their values.
“Salish Soils is just such a beautiful example of what pivoting from harmful relationship to Mother Earth looks like to [what] a regenerative relationship with Mother Earth looks like,” he says.
Access to funding key to environmental stewardship
The scale of environmental impact that’s possible by giving Indigenous entrepreneurs a seat at the table is not limited to B.C.’s Sunshine Coast.
Sharleen Gale is the chief councillor of the Fort Nelson First Nation in B.C. as well as the chair of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition.
The FNMPC acts as an advisor to 144 member communities in facilitating large capital-intensive projects on First Nations, Métis or Inuit territories. Since its founding in 2015, the coalition has so far provided support services such as securing access to financing and negotiating benefit-sharing agreements on 12 major projects with capital costs totalling $45 billion.
Gale says the coalition was formed in response to Indigenous communities wanting to secure a stake in a major project that would cross multiple territories, but were being offered financing at rates typical of credit cards, rather than viable business loans.
Continuing the Conversation around Truth and Reconciliation
Gale tells Global News that economic opportunity — and access to financing underpinning those opportunities — allows Indigenous communities to take a more active role in environmental stewardship of their land.
Her own community of Fort Nelson was recently able to move forward on a project converting an oil and gas well to a geothermal facility, for example.
“One thing that I’ve been raised by my elders [to follow] is that if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you,” Gale says.
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“We’re not just going to invest in a project that doesn’t meet our values and doesn’t leave things for future generations.”
Advocates who spoke to Global News say it’s critical that companies with projects that impact Indigenous territories, particularly those in oil and gas and pipeline sectors, bring Indigenous stakeholders into the fold.
Shannin Metatawabin is the CEO of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA), a network that oversees almost 60 Indigenous financial institutions and facilitates federal government funding programs.
Because Indigenous peoples were relegated to reserves, away from the major centres of commerce as Canada was being formed, Metatawabin says that reconciliation must be about integrating these communities into the country’s economic prosperity — particularly when that involves natural resources on Indigenous land.
He says it’s become a common refrain that major infrastructure projects are held up in Canada due to “Indigenous uncertainty” — a shorthand for protesters opposing projects that don’t have the consent of the community.
Bringing Indigenous stakeholders to the table and making sure they have access to reasonable financing to take equity and help shape their projects according to those values is the only viable path forward for many of these projects, Metatawabin argues. He adds that he believes international players are increasingly realizing the importance of baking meaningful consultation into their business plans.
“If we want to continue extracting, utilizing and creating major projects, we want to be part of this because this is our territory,” Metatawabin tells Global News. “And if it’s going to go through our traditional territory, then we need to be partners — fair and square partners.”
The role of government in economic reconciliation
The NACCA administers the federal government’s Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Program (AEP), which provides loans and business support to startups. Metatawabin says that while the program has been successful since it launched more than three decades ago, there’s been a waning of contributions for the operational support elements of the AEP that allow Indigenous financial institutions to hire and plan for the future.
In order to “jumpstart” the Indigenous economy — particularly for growing Indigenous businesses hoping to scale up and reach the next level — he says the government needs to funding promises that “top up” the original contributions to the program that have been “recycled” over its history.
Gale and her team at FNMPC, meanwhile, have been advocating for the creation of a national Indigenous loan guarantee, similar to programs that exist provincially in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
Such a program could see loans for Indigenous capital projects secured by the federal government, which reduces the risk for lenders financing a project and helps to lower interest rates. Ottawa already extends such guarantees to projects in various industries, such as homebuilding; just last week the federal government announced it would top up the Canada Mortgage Bonds program with an extra $20 billion to incentivize homebuilding in the country.
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Global News reached out to Finance Canada to ask for a response to recent petitions for an Indigenous loan guarantee program.
“We know that access to capital financing is an essential part of economic reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples,” said spokesperson Katherine Cuplinskas in an email to Global News on Thursday.
She highlighted a stated $18-billion increase in funding to annual federal funding for Indigenous priorities since the Liberals took office in 2015. Among the initiatives highlighted by Cuplinskas was $8.7 million in spending this fiscal year to develop a national benefits-sharing framework to help Indigenous communities invest in major resource projects.
The statement did not include reference to a possible Indigenous loan guarantee program, but said the government would “continue to work with Indigenous communities to ensure their economic empowerment.”
Business leaders who spoke to Global News for this story said that while government support is critical to lifting up Indigenous peoples, reconciliation is not achieved just by funnelling capital into communities.
Metatawabin gives the example of the Clearwater Seafood deal as a model he’d like to see replicated for other Indigenous communities. He says the $1-billion deal that saw M’ikmaq First Nations partner with private industry to acquire the country’s largest seafood firm ensures the community will be able to create own-source revenue for generations — a path to self-dependence, not reliance on government support.
For Lacerte, the “reconciliation economy” cannot be underpinned by government grants and programs alone, which often come with conditions for how money is spent.
Instead, he says the more Indigenous businesses and communities are able to secure financing to dictate their own economic fates, the closer they can get to shaping a life that aligns with their own values.
“There’s a huge opportunity for a revitalized Indigenous economy to drive some really important change metrics in Indigenous communities,” Lacerte says.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
