Thank you very much, Ms. Idlout.
In terms of institutions and development, the impact of COVID-19 was interesting. One thing is that it affected indigenous businesses disproportionately.
If you look at the industries that Métis, in particular, are exposed to, Métis are 40% less likely to be in some industries, like finance, scientific and technical, than non-indigenous Canadians. When you look at tourism, they are far more likely to be in tourism. They are 400% more likely to be in oil and gas, mining and those industries—the primary industries.
In those are industries, you can't remotely log or you can't remotely mine, so the public restrictions hit them very hard. Tourism for Métis is quite often an export industry to the United States. Those were disproportionately affected.
Because Métis, first nations and Inuit don't have a great deal of equity to bring in, when they do finance a business start-up, they have a higher debt-to-equity ratio. When you then have a program like CEBA, which was delivered for the Métis through the Métis capital corporations, you're adding debt to a business that already had a weaker balance sheet because it had a higher debt-to-equity ratio.
The programming that may have been appropriate for non-indigenous businesses was not appropriate for Métis, first nations and Inuit businesses. It added stress to balance sheets that were already stressed in comparison to non-indigenous businesses. Having the same terms, they were just programs of general application sometimes delivered through indigenous organizations, but they did not consider the fundamental characteristics and barriers to economic development that indigenous businesses face. I understand they were done quickly, but they weren't particularly appropriate for the indigenous population.
Again, indigenous businesses were more heavily affected because they are in industries that were more heavily affected than non-indigenous. The effects have been fairly severe. The after-effects are going to be severe because you now have indigenous businesses with stressed balance sheets that will slow their opportunity to rebound from the economy. They may see higher degrees of business failure than you would in the non-indigenous businesses.
Again, the institutions that we support them with, such as the Métis capital corporations and the other AFIs, are relatively recent and somewhat weak.
The last point I will make is that, all of that set aside, in Ontario where I am, 60% of Métis businesses borrowed their emergency COVID funding from the Métis institution instead of from the bank. Even though every one of them had a banking relationship, 60% turned to the Métis Voyageur to provide that. That shows the centrality of Métis institutions in delivering programming and support to Métis entrepreneurs.