Sure. I'll do my best to describe it. I can probably provide a hard example. Maybe that would be helpful.
We recently moved forward on an investment in the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, which is in the central Manitoba area, close to the lake, to do 100 geothermal installations in residential homes and to retrofit the homes at the same time. It is probably the most complicated area to work in: on-reserve residential housing, which is community owned.
As we started to engage with the community and unpack what they wanted to do—it represented an investment of about $7.5 million on our part—the community stepped forward and said, “With this, we would actually like to build the social enterprise where we can be a clean energy installer, hire our own people and build the company.” They have a very good development core, so they have some experience with it, and we would provide our expertise to help them build the social enterprise, along with the capital to do the actual work. They are marketing their services not only to their own nation, but to other nations.
The other thing that's happening is that you're hiring your own people. You're taking them off social assistance. There are all kinds of government savings in the long run, to be honest. You're also creating a velocity in the local economy, which is what happens underneath major projects. There's this big thick middle, where economic activity really happens with SMEs. It's a way to generate change.
The other thing that's happening is that the community is prioritizing their elders' homes. They're making a cultural choice, which is spectacular. They're also making a choice about homes or multi-residential dwellings that they own, because if they own them and they get the long-term energy savings, they're saving on their block funding from government. They're turning around and putting that into health care, training and education—you name it. The community-wide benefits, when you can unpack and work with them on the things they want to do, are not only in the long-term resiliency of the housing stock, which we're all very concerned about in Canada.
There's a way, when you deeply embed with communities, in which you can find different angles. What we are able to do is to actually bring in more Province of Manitoba funding on doing business start-up, because that's a new business as well. We struck a deal with Efficiency Manitoba to do 1,000 more units across the province, which represents $80 million to $100 million or somewhere in there. It creates this financial momentum—the investment momentum behind it—and it's exciting in that way.