Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. We're aware of a few communities in the Atlantic in particular. The snow crab industry especially is highly affected, simply because the restaurants are not open. Delivering their products to restaurants was not available over the last few months. We definitely have seen tha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we are.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Powlowski, for that question. We actually make loans for pretty well anything a first nation wants to do. It's kind of a running joke we have that it just has to be legal. It can be anything socially or economically. It can do equity into revenue-generating operat

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. That's correct. That's what we call “monetization”. It's a leveraging of dollars.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. What happens is that there's usually an agreement with the Government of Canada. I'm just going to digress a bit. Right now, the majority of the loans that first nations have are backed by revenue-sharing agreements with provinces. Through Ontario, the lotteries share reven

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Recently there was a study done in southern Manitoba that looked at leakage. This is for every dollar that's spent. When they did their study, they looked at net contribution to the economy. The first nations in Manitoba are net contributors to the economy. I think the general po

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm going to get Mr. Berna to answer that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, they can. Any first nation that's under the Indian Act at the current time can access loans from us. There is a process. They need to request scheduling. It's a voluntary process to work under the act. From there, they need to have a financial performance certificate that'

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We do have a credit enhancement fund. As I mentioned at the beginning, certain safeguards under the act anticipated one or two first nations defaulting and going bad. With the pandemic, it could have been all of them, and it just couldn't sustain that. That's what the credit enha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not sure if that question was for me, but to me that would be a shovel-ready project. I know that where I was born and raised in the Northwest Territories, they definitely need high-speed Internet up there. I was on a Zoom call like this, and we had to use Zoom for the video

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's a very good question. I'll start, and then I'll turn it over quickly to Mr. Berna. Again, we use existing revenue streams. Every time we get an increase in a rating as our borrowers increase, the amount we borrow increases also, and from there, with a good track record,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. My name is Ernie Daniels, and I'm president and CEO of the First Nations Finance Authority. With me is Steve Berna, our chief operating officer. First, I would like to thank the committee for undertaking this study as your first priority since the election. As you kn

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Is that for me?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the really good question. Monetization is a really simple concept. As individuals we use it almost every day. When we're going to buy a house we don't usually have the money on hand to buy it. What we do is take out a mortgage that is based on our ability to servic

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can add to that. The real barrier is having an adequate revenue stream to support the debt. The only way we're going to grow and economic development is going to flourish is by having access to affordable financing. Under this act, we have been able to do that. Once monetiza