Sure. We have a long history of working closely with key indigenous communities: the Innu, the Nunatsiavut, the NunatuKavut in Labrador, the Conne River Band, and the Qalipu Band on the island of Newfoundland and Labrador. In fact, I've had the good fortune of having spent time, about a year, earlier in my career with ACOA, actually working with a Nunatsiavut subsidiary to help them back in the days when Voisey's Bay was in its exploration stage.
We work with all of these groups and their members and beneficiaries in a number of key areas. Building business capacity is an important part of the work we do with them, and that's to assist with business planning and mentoring; supporting community business infrastructure, enabling infrastructure that allows indigenous communities to take advantage of industrial development and business opportunities; and investing directly in businesses as well. It's an approach that's very much hands-on.
We've had also the good fortune of having strong business development activities occurring near some of our aboriginal communities: aquaculture development on the south coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Voisey's Bay and Lower Churchill projects happening in Labrador. All of these are in close proximity to aboriginal communities.
Over the last five years, we've supported about 66 projects with indigenous communities, totalling just short of $9 million. As I said, we take a very hands-on approach in all three of those areas.
This is interesting, too. I visited the Conne River Band a couple of months ago and met with Chief Mi'sel Joe, and when he referred to our field officer as “our guy getting things done for us”, that was quite heartening and it's really good to hear. We've really worked hard to build our relationship with our aboriginal clients and our aboriginal communities.