Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the nine nations of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council and our economic development corporation, MLTC Industrial Investments.
As introduced, my name is Tina Rasmussen. I'm corporate development officer for MLTC. I am a proud member of the Flying Dust First Nation, and I am coming to you today from Treaty No. 6 territory.
You may ask why MLTC Industrial Investments would be on the same stage as some of these very important indigenous organizations. I think MLTC Industrial Investments is a very good example of a “boots on the ground” company that is attempting to move our nine first nations forward in terms of economic development.
MLTC Industrial Investments exists to create successful economic development through business investment and development that will generate wealth, employment and training opportunity while improving the health and prosperity of our shareholders, the nine nations of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council.
Coincidentally, our particular tribal council not only has nine member nations, but we hail from three different treaty territories: Treaty No. 6, Treaty No. 8 and Treaty No. 10.
I'll talk today about some of the positive things that have been happening in government and some of the things that we think can be moved forward even more to improve and remove barriers to facilitation of indigenous economic development—in effect, create a better support system and a way to help level the economic playing field for our country, for indigenous people to be able to participate at a level equal to that of other companies and other communities in this country.
First, with respect to federal funding, we feel that by implementing the following outcomes we can improve a number of things for first nations' economic development in Canada. We hope that the government will maintain the current funding carve-outs nationally for indigenous-owned projects. All federal funding for economic development activities across the domains, whether it's infrastructure, renewable energy or natural resources, should maintain a special minimum 10% carve-out reserved for indigenous businesses only, specially identified, and this carve-out should not exclude any indigenous business from accessing larger-source or multiple-source funding.
Second, we'd hope that the government would maintain enhanced grant contribution levels to indigenous-owned projects. We've put forward the most recent NRCan SREPs project funding, where there was a specific $100-million set-aside for indigenous projects, where the indigenous communities were able to access up to 75% grant funding. Just to show you the great need out there, the $1-billion funding pool was expended in less than a year. I believe, if my figures are correct, that around $260 million of that was expended to indigenous projects. That is a remarkable way to help indigenous economic development move forward.
Third, we'd like to see the creation of access to streamlined business start-up funding. It takes much effort from business concept initiation to fully developed, shovel-ready projects. It would be helpful if federal funding programs provided better support for the early-stage costs of project development: legal, accounting, engineering and miscellaneous expenses. Often, in order to access any kind of funding, the project has to be shovel-ready, and in many instances the first nations are not in the best position to be prepared to get that application to that point and to have the funding available to expend all of that revenue to get it to that point.
With respect to federal financing, we'd hope that the government would consider implementing the following. First is to maintain access to sizable financing or term loans with limited security. An example might be to ensure that there is financing support to indigenous businesses through term loans of $1 million to $5 million, where there is limited security and financing is difficult to achieve. It is often very expensive when you're going out into the regular market, especially when you're trying to lift new business opportunities off the ground.
We're hoping that the committee will recommend to government as well to expand the First Nations Finance Authority mandate to include first nations tribal council and economic development corporations. I think the tide is changing so that many first nations are moving the political side of things away from the business side of things and allowing a lot more business development to happen through their economic development corporations. However, as we currently understand, the FNFA is not accessible for tribal councils or economic development corporations. Everything has to be run specifically through the individual first nation band.
Another area that we feel is a barrier—