Public Safety Committee on June 5th, 2014

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate both of you being here.

I want to pick up on something my colleague Mr. Maguire was asking you about at the end of his questioning time. He made an assertion that aboriginal Canadians are a group that could be very positively impacted by this idea of social financing and working with partners.

I certainly agree. I think there is great potential there, no question, and it seems that you agree with him on that as well.

I just want to pick up and expand on that a bit more, because I do think there is probably a lot of opportunity there. I think of the partnerships already on many of our first nation reserves with corporations, businesses, corporate citizens, and others. I'm thinking of the first nation reserve in my riding. They already have a number of partnerships with outside interests—companies and corporations—on economic development opportunities.

I think there must be some opportunity to expand on the relationships and partnerships already there. I know there are many companies out there, especially larger corporations, that do have corporate social responsibility initiatives. There must be ways we can tie those together and really create something that could be very impactful and positive for our first nation communities in this country.

I wonder if you could just expand a bit more on that and give us some more thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.

[Adam Jagelewski]

I don't know if I'm going to say anything more than what you just said, but maybe I can provide a little bit of colour. Every year I speak at the aboriginal trust and endowment conference. I think I'm getting the right name on that, and I hope I am. This is essentially a group of council members across the country who go and they look and they discuss different investment opportunities and ways in which they can invest the moneys they have and they're sitting on, and they can't find impact investments. What I mean when I say “impact investments” is that they can't find investments that are generating impact in their own communities. They have to invest in markets. They have to put their money offshore. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could provide an opportunity for them to invest in themselves?

Another piece of this, and you mentioned it, is the resource companies. Increasingly they're coming to us and they're frustrated. They have these outcome benefit agreements and they would love the opportunity to develop new ways in which they can channel their capital to provide economic and social benefits to those communities, which aren't just seen as cutting a cheque but that are actually utilizing the resources they have in a very positive way.

So we have these stakeholders that are so motivated to do this. We need to find a way to make it happen.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

What would your suggestions be in terms of next steps? I'm thinking specifically in regard to this idea of being able to build on those partnerships and work with our aboriginal communities. Even in general, as well, would you want to just comment? I think only have a couple of minutes left. On this especially or in general, would you like to comment? What do you see being the next steps that we could take? What would be your suggestions in terms of where we go next?

[Adam Jagelewski]

I'll reiterate that I don't think we want to reinvent the wheel here. I don't think we need to find the silver bullet intervention that's going to solve all of our problems. I think we need to start small and find an intervention that we know is working. There are a couple of aboriginal skills development and training programs in British Columbia that have proven to be successful. Why don't we look at those? Why don't we put them under the microscope and really identify what's working, and start talking to some of these mining and gas companies and determine what their interest is in investing in this community, and use a pilot approach with the general mindset that it is a little bit of an experiment and that we're going to include the community as much as possible to make this culturally appropriate and have everybody sign on to just a new way of doing business?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Great. I thank you very much for that. I appreciate it. I appreciate all of your comments today and your help. It was very helpful and I appreciate your being here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Richards.

At this time the chair, on behalf of the committee, would certainly like to thank Mr. Jagelewski and Ms. Doyle. I can assure you that your contributions are not only informative today but most welcome, and we certainly appreciate the enthusiasm, the interest, and the significant knowledge you have on this issue, given your—I won't say “tender”—age. We're deeply impressed. Thank you so kindly.

The meeting is adjourned.