Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When I first started, they told me, “Just make sure it's legal.” One of the revenue streams that's not allowed is the GST revenue. Some first nations actually have arrangements with provinces and Canada about the GST. That's not an eligible revenue stream.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. I just want to say, “Go, Blue Jays, go!” It's going to help our economy. Thank you, committee members. My name is Ernie Daniels. I have Steve Berna here with me. I'm the president and CEO and Steve is the COO. We're with the First Nations Finance Authority,

Finance committee  It's really interesting. Canada is so big and all the different economic activities from the different regions are different but very similar. A lot of first nations are really catching up. Infrastructure is a big thing. I think, number one, infrastructure for roads, for schools,

Finance committee  One of the other things that the regime, the act, is doing is...we're looking at trying to get first nations involvement in large resource projects across the country, so pipelines, whatever. That's currently being looked at right now, so there's a lot of work. First nations are

Finance committee  It's a very good question. Just the nature of being on a reserve is a real impediment. You can't put up land or other assets as collateral. It's very, very difficult. I'm sure the credit union people would agree. That's the number one thing. The other thing, I think, is the lac

Finance committee  The first nations that come to our door to borrow have gone through a pretty rigorous process. Most of the first nations are pretty well organized, from a governance perspective as well as economically. They have their projects already in mind in terms of what they want to do. Ou

Finance committee  We lend only on existing revenues, not future revenues.

Finance committee  No, we haven't talked to anybody who is working in those areas. Usually it's because they don't know we exist. As we get more known, we're sure this is going to happen. We're talking with a lot of different governments across the country and looking at other things. We're looking

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

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  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  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  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