Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[Tabatha Bull]

Firstly, on the geographic component, businesses definitely were impacted, based on the lockdowns wherever they tended to live, and definitely in some communities in community-owned businesses where communities had actually stopped off their border from coming and going. The Six Nations in particular definitely saw a significant loss with their businesses, They would normally have had people coming into the community to purchase at businesses. This was also a key area because it is typically on-reserve businesses that do not have a CRA business registration number, and those privately owned businesses on a reserve definitely were unable to access a significant amount of that funding.

Then, we also see, from a finance perspective, that more rural or remote businesses don't have a traditional lending bank branch there, or they don't have a specific branch that they work with. At the very beginning of the pandemic, we saw a lot of those branches actually shut down. We saw a lot of cash flow issues specifically in remote communities, where there just wasn't cash in the machines for people to get money out to be able to purchase from businesses, because that was a restriction at the very beginning of COVID as well.

We definitely see from a financial perspective that it does impact geographically.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

Mr. Metatawabin, you have about 20 seconds, if you also wanted to respond.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I think what's important to understand is that with any sort of access to capital, you have enabling programs that support the deployment of that capital. What we need are innovative programs that support the movement of capital to the communities. In this case, we're trying to develop the entrepreneurs in communities, which requires business development officers to support each and every entrepreneur with pre-business support services, capacity programs and just getting them excited to start a business.

It's the same thing with mortgages. Everybody is used to social housing. We have to move them to an understanding that having equity in a home is very valuable in creating generational wealth. That takes time, and that takes capacity and development and the right enablers to ensure we can deliver these programs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to Ms. Idlout.

Ms. Idlout, you have six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you.

I will ask Shannin a question. I was pleased when you said at the beginning of your presentation that you had started an indigenous housing fund. I'd like to know more about your proposal regarding the development of the indigenous housing fund.

What state are they at in getting the fund established? If you can tell us what supports they need to ensure its success, we have to support this.

[English]

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Thank you for the question. It's really important.

We've had a couple of our members who have been delivering a housing program within their regions. They've delivered $30 million through their own efforts to raise capital within their regions. What we want to do is utilize the NACCA network and we [Technical difficulty—Editor] financial institutions from coast to coast to coast, utilize their 35 years of experience in providing business loans, assessing business loans and having the administration and the infrastructure in place to start delivering mortgages. With mortgages, they would be able to support the market within the community that is able to handle a mortgage payment. We've done some work and $3 billion to $4 billion in mortgages is available, but we need the government to support the development of this program.

I used an analogy of a snowball. If we started with a certain amount of money to get it going and we deployed that money, we'd take those mortgages, put them together and raise more money on the market so it continually grows. The bigger part is to repair the housing system and the thinking, mentality and community of the social housing lens.

We have to introduce everybody to the concept of owning a house, taking care of a house and building equity in their house. There's a capacity program that's required to build that market up and to work with that market, because it's not something that will happen overnight.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you so much.

To clarify in English what my question was, I'm quite interested in the presentation that you had about the indigenous housing fund. I'm wondering what stage you're at with it and what you see needs to happen to ensure its success.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I would really like the committee to put that into their report. We're going to be presenting that concept to a director general's table looking at the same issues. We're going to present it to Indigenous Services Canada. The more support we have for it, the more likely it is that it's going to happen.

Your feedback is very important. Thank you.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Shannin.

My second question is to Tabatha Bull. You mentioned barriers and support systems. You mentioned three items, access....

How would you kick-start those? How would you move those forward? If more people take advantage of this, how would you promote it to ensure that more people are using the system?

[English]

[Tabatha Bull]

Meegwetch. Thank you.

First, on procurement, we have been working quite closely with the government, as I said, on pushing for the 5%, and for every ministry and organization to meet the 5%. Within CCAB we have a program called “supply change”, which has a procurement marketplace and close to [Technical difficulty—Editor] with corporate Canada. That's enabling them to be able to get the expertise to respond to bids and to build their capacity, but definitely we need to ensure that we're building capacity within indigenous businesses to be able to work with the federal government. That's one key area.

We also need policy changes within the government in order for us to ensure that indigenous businesses have access. Within our procurement marketplace, we do share [Technical difficulty—Editor] government [Technical difficulty—Editor], but we've been working with other national indigenous organizations to understand how best we can bring together all of the indigenous businesses that we support and ensure that they have connections to the federal government as well.

From a program development perspective, we continue to push for every ministry and organization within the federal government to look at their programming and ensure that there aren't barriers for indigenous businesses to respond; ensure that they're communicating specifically to indigenous businesses, which of course we're here to help with; and have set-asides within those programming dollars—for ISED to have set-asides within their programming dollars, for the Minister of Agriculture to have set-asides—to ensure that indigenous businesses have a niche within those programming dollars to be able to apply.

When we look at infrastructure, as we've seen before in other provinces and other governments, when infrastructure is being built in communities, we need to ensure that there's a community business that's part of that project, or a community as an equity project. I think there's [Technical difficulty—Editor] incent corporates and to incent equity partnerships in ensuring that any procurement response or RFP specifically with infrastructure has an indigenous community or an indigenous business as part of that project.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Qujannamiik.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Ms. Idlout.

I'm afraid that brings our round to a close.

I want to thank Ms. Bull and Mr. Metatawabin for their insights today, for their opinions about barriers to economic development, and also for some of their recommendations. We very much appreciate it as a committee.

Thank you very much for taking the time to come and speak with us today. It's much appreciated.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Thank you.

[Tabatha Bull]

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

At this point, Madam Clerk, I would like to suspend so that we can reconvene as a committee to look at the work plan.

[Proceedings continue in camera]