Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Why, sure.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When it was first announced it became really clear to us, because we received calls from our borrowing members that they were falling through the cracks. Some of their employees couldn't access the $2,000 a month. Also, the wage subsidy was where there was the biggest impact. I t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For this year, and especially with the recent announcement, we can meet our obligations. If COVID-19 goes to 18 months, as was initially forecast, we would definitely start to experience some problems in the second year. A first nation that relies on a lot of own-source revenue,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If I could add to that—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can give you a couple of examples. We had a first nation near Vancouver, in the heart of Chilliwack in British Columbia, that borrowed money—and they used their own source revenues to support it—to build a sports field for their community, a real running track, change rooms and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If they are operating.... Well, you can look at Enoch Cree. They operate a casino. They also have commercial property they lease out. They also have a gas bar. They have a number of different initiatives. It's where they have control of the operations. In some cases, first nation

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Schmale. That's a very good question. When we are lending monies to a first nation, we are always collecting information on the economic impact. So far, with our $900 million that we've lent out, the economic impact we see is, at a minimum, about $2 billion. We kn

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for that question, Ms. McPherson. For clarification, we don't lend to individual.... We just lend to the first nations bands. We operate under the act. Our eligible borrowers are only Indian Act bands at this time. We've noticed that a lot of the infrastructure the fi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll just add to Mr. Berna's remarks. One of the other items we had was monetization of Canada's infrastructure dollars. Monetization would be a leveraging of current infrastructure budget dollars, which we could leverage into the market to build a lot more infrastructure we need

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm going to ask my colleague, Mr. Berna, to respond to that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll ask Mr. Berna to answer that as well.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's a very good question. Thank you, Mr. Battiste. When COVID-19 started, it became very clear to us that a lot of our borrowing members were going to have revenue streams interrupted because of social distancing. A lot of them operate VLT lounges in their communities right a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, this would allow those first nations to continue to be in good standing, and to continue to access future borrowings as they need them, to really build their economy. You have to remember that they are using their own-source revenues right now to build all this infrastructu

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. I was about to say thank you because I was pretty well finished. I just had a sentence about projecting that if more first nations came forward with shovel-ready projects.... Of the 63 borrowing members, we estimated that 60 would come forward, and we estimate about

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the invitation. We are calling you from the Westbank First Nation Reserve. The FNFA was created in 2005 under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, with all-party support. We are a not-for-profit Canada-wide pooled borrowing institution with direct access to the