Thank you very much.
Thirty-five years ago, the government recognized that indigenous people were not participating in the economy. One of the things they did is that they created a network of indigenous financial institutions on par with the Business Development Bank of Canada to encourage the economic growth of our community.
They put together a program that provides some enabling programs to support indigenous entrepreneurs to access financing. What they found is that they couldn't get mainstream financing because of the systemic barriers, lack of generational wealth and the legislative barriers that continue to persist today, so they created a program with $240 million from government, and they've recycled it 15 times to $3.3 billion in lending from coast to coast to coast.
We provide support to Métis entrepreneurs, Inuit entrepreneurs and first nation entrepreneurs. We've been doing this for 35 years. Some of our IFIs are celebrating 35 years of impacting the community.
Thank you.