Agriculture committee  Waciye. Good afternoon. My name is Shannin Metatawabin. I'm the chief executive officer of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association. I'm also a member of the Fort Albany First Nation of the Mushkegowuk Nation in James Bay. I am joined today by my board chair, Andr

Agriculture committee  We did a study with KPMG. It identified a demand in the indigenous community for $105 million to $162 million that can be used over the next five years. Based on this study, we have created the indigenous growth fund to address the needs for that capital. We should be able to do

Agriculture committee  That was a study we did to look at the value of what our investment is. Every dollar brings $3.60 back to the GDP. There was another study that was a little bit older and done by Industry Canada, which showed that every dollar invested in equity returned $1.40 to the treasury dep

Agriculture committee  The beauty of our network is that half of our members are Community Futures organizations. Our organizational members are aboriginal capital corporations that do peer lending and Community Futures. We plug into that closely, and we represent Community Futures.

Agriculture committee  I think ISED is working with Two Rivers, an aboriginal capital corporation in the Six Nations, so it's right around your riding.

Agriculture committee  The beauty of NACCA is we represent 59 aboriginal financial corporations all across the country. It's an infrastructure that's embedded in all of Canada. Each of them has first nation communities, tribal councils, community members that they connect with. They've seen people grow

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I could build on that. I have some experience. I work for a mining company, and in some of their environmental work they found that in the muskeg areas—and I'm from James Bay where the muskeg is—if they aerate the soil, they can turn that soil into croppable land. We have

Agriculture committee  With the north though, there are some good examples of good food security projects that have been in place and that continue to be successful today. For 20 years, they've been doing farmers' markets in James Bay, flying the food in and creating a palette so that everybody is used

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Hello, and thank you. My name is Shannin Metatawabin. I am the chief executive officer of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association. I'm also a member of the Fort Albany First Nation of the Mushkegowuk nation. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today re

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. I think Tabatha covered a lot of the concerns we had initially. A majority of the businesses that we support are sole proprietors. A lot of them weren't eligible for the wage subsidy portion through the business, so they have been waiting for this sup

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I certainly hope so. I just signed the agreement on Tuesday. I fully expected to sign it a few weeks ago. I was assured that it was going to go a lot quicker, but I suppose that for a program that was announced and then launched it's the quickest that it has ever been done. That

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the announcement that the Prime Minister made more than a month ago is a good start. We wanted more flexibility. We wanted the ability to provide more capital to some businesses and less to others and to not have this paintbrush of $40,000 applied throughout, but we're go

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think some of the biggest gaps are support for larger types of businesses. Indigenous people own large hotels and other services that are related to transportation, as you've heard, and they've been left out of any sort of support. Forty thousand dollars per business is not goi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the tourism industry has come to a standstill. A lot of businesses have already closed down. They are really one of the major areas and industries on which we have seen a negative impact. NACCA has supported 47,000 loans and a majority of those are for those businesses yo

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Can I jump in?