Excellent. That sounds good to me.
Thank you very much for accommodating this, and thank you for asking me to speak. My name is Robert Beamish, and I'm of Métis ancestry. My father is Algonquin Métis and Irish, and my mother is Arawak—which is the name of the indigenous people of Jamaica—and African Jamaican from Ghana.
My business partner Evan Wilcox, who is also Métis, and I started Anokasan Capital, which is a specialized brokerage firm that specializes in securing capital from east Asia—investors in China, Hong Kong and Japan—for projects that are owned by Canadian indigenous communities. We bring a bit of a different background, in that most of the work we do is with Canadian indigenous communities but from the international perspective of bringing in investors from Asia—China, Hong Kong and Japan—and managing the cultural differences and relationship-building process from that [Inaudible—Editor].
Here's a little bit specifically about how we started. Evan and I were actually working together at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. After a great year of business, we looked back and started asking different questions of our constituents. We started to ask how much of the capital flowing to Canada reached indigenous communities and how many of those businesses that we helped expand to Hong Kong were indigenous. The answer was a resounding zero. We set out to change that by starting this entity, Anokasan Capital. Anokasan means eagle in the Cree language.
Some of the best practices that we've learned over time have come from failure, which is a great way to learn. I don't always recommend it, but if it does come up, I definitely seize the learning opportunities in that. We will be speaking from some of our failures as well as some of our successes.
Our first point is to start with understanding. Seek to know before seeking to grow. Put the community needs and community understanding before going into proposals. Before drawing up contracts or agreements, go in and understand not only the economic priorities of the community but also the social priorities, and whether the social priorities and issues can be addressed by a project. Next—I believe Raylene spoke of this—discover an alignment between project officials, community leaders and the actual community members, because there can be so many voices at the table, and sometimes it's easy to speak on behalf of an entire group when that might not be the case.
In terms of communication alignment, provide the platform for concerns to be voiced, or create one. Have regular intervals for communication. Encourage positive and negative feedback. Encouraging negative feedback—because there will always be some—allows concerns to be addressed upfront in the planning process of a project and the relationship building stages, rather than having them remedied in the later stages of a project, resulting in longer delays. Having regular intervals for communication can be really effective, as well as having avenues for dispute resolution and allowing for voices of all levels to be heard regarding the project, because projects often affect all levels of the community. Although some levels may be onside, others may not. Knowing this upfront provides an avenue to address disputes prior to shovels hitting the ground.
The next point is cultural alignment. Our differences can only bring us together once we understand how they separate us. We do a practice of actively becoming aware of our own cultural biases, which affect how we do business, because we work between two very different cultures when working with investors in east Asia and working with local indigenous communities. We see how the cultures that they operate in affect how they do business and how they build relationships. We're also very aware of how our culture affects how we're doing that. We determine our own biases, how they affect our decision-making process and how we go about doing business, and we ask our partners to do the same.
As well, being proactive when it comes to understanding protocol just shows that you're a good partner in building these relationships and understanding the protocols related to the land, the community and the relationships with elders. These protocols are fundamental to culture, community and way of life. Any kind of partnership with the community affects so many levels, and these protocols should be understood and adhered to at every level with technical partners as well as with project delegates.
We're now moving forward to the four Es. Sustainable communities start with sustainable development. The four Es that we look to integrate are employment, equity, environment and education. These are now looked for and integrated into a lot of different projects. We look to integrate them upfront after we do that knowledge and understanding phase.
After we take that knowledge of the community, we look for ways to integrate these four Es into proposals that are meaningful and impactful to that community and their specific needs. We don't want to leave these as two concessions made in a project proposal, but by integrating them upfront it shows that we are committed to not only this project but to the community, because these are long projects that require long relationships with partners.
The last point, in terms of what are best practices for us, would be informational alignment, which comes down to what gets measured gets delivered. Just as projects are measured in regular intervals, the development of projects is measured as well as goals and certain signposts of development. Those measurements should also be had for community initiatives as they relate to employment and education, for a twofold reason. One, they show that these initiatives are being delivered upon and that certain aspects that were agreed upon in proposals are being met.
The second point is that this information is critical to a lot of communities, where statistical information is lacking in many of them. To be able to provide numbers and statistics can help policy-makers generate policies that can be impactful once they know certain trends and demographics within their own community.
Those are our best practices.
There are also some common pitfalls that we've hit. The first one is that being unresponsive doesn't necessarily mean being uninterested. So many people wear different hats within the community and timelines can get stretched. What is a timeline for us may not be a timeline for them. We don't know everything that's happening within the community, the protocols they have to go through or the people they have to speak with to get approval. Sometimes no response doesn't mean that interest in the project is lost. That's the first one.
I'd also point out that there's a concentration risk in relationships. We had a case where we were working with a community in northern B.C., and our entire relationship was with a specific economic developer. Sadly, that economic developer's wife passed away and he was unable to continue his work and stepped down from his role. All of our negotiations up until that point were with that one person, and the project development and understanding as it related to that community was with that one person, and everything fell through at that point.
It's important to note that and to loop in more people to account for that.