Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On that request for additional capital for aboriginal financial institutions, many of those institutions were established 25 years ago to live off the interest they earned. In those days interest rates were higher, but with interest rates at about 4% now, you don't have enough to

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think that could be done by using the network of the aboriginal financial institutions. Right now many of them are already lending on reserve. They have been able to overcome the issue of security in most regards because the first nations allow you to go on reserve to collect s

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Actually, AFIs are by and large developmental lenders to aboriginal businesses across the country. Through different programs we've been able to provide business loans to our clients and help, as I said, with the start-up of those 27,000 to 30,000 aboriginal businesses across Can

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have only just a cursory understanding of the Alberta project.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There definitely is not enough financing available to support those major projects. For example, our AFI has a loan limit of $150,000, so you can't do a whole lot of financing, other than for small and medium-sized businesses. For major projects there is just not enough. For any

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I'm very honoured to be able to have this opportunity to speak about aboriginal economic development in Canada and the work that we've been doing as a board to provide recommendations to the federal government. I work with an aboriginal financial institut