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Indigenous Markets

Jaimie Lickers, Senior Vice President, Indigenous Markets, CIBC: As we approach the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I&#8217;m reflecting on my recent conversation with four Indigenous leaders about the opportunities for Indigenous communities across the North that will come with the federal government&#8217;s renewed focus on defence, innovation and economic sovereignty. Billions of dollars in investments will be flowing to communities across the country as part of the Defence Industrial Strategy, which poses unique opportunities for First Nations to meaningfully participate in projects that could have significant impacts for generations to come. During our discussion, each leader spoke about some of the important projects that are planned for or already underway across the North and what they mean for their communities. But they also spoke passionately about the need for Indigenous communities to be engaged and consulted from the very start, as well as for the economic and social benefits to remain long after the work is completed. Here, now is the last question I posed to the group. Their answers speak to the spirit of reconciliation that not only marks September 30th, but should also be at the centre of all engagement with Indigenous communities as we build a more prosperous, secure and resilient Canada.
Jaimie Lickers: I want to ask one last question, and I might make it a two part question. What&#8217;s the biggest challenge that you see for your community communities in meaningful participation in these projects. But then what opportunity are you most excited about? And I&#8217;m going to ask you each to either you pick one, pick both. What&#8217;s the greatest challenge? What are you most excited about in terms of of all that&#8217;s going to happen in the North in the next ten years?
Darrell Beaulieu, CEO, Denendeh Investment Inc.: Okay. I&#8217;ll start with the opportunity. I&#8217;ll try to hit them both, because when you look at projects like this and like any business, you&#8217;re looking at people, you&#8217;re looking at products and you&#8217;re looking at profit. You know, you need the people and the capacity that they can bring and the product that the Canadian government or the people of the North want at the end of the day. And the profit mean meaning that you&#8217;re going to have benefits to your people, to the communities, to the territory, and of course, to Canada. And that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s all about right now. So look at it. This in this way, our elders looked 100 years down the road when they signed the treaties. And we&#8217;ve got to continue that looking far down the road. But these projects are ten, 20 year projects. So we&#8217;re going to have a whole group of kids start kindergarten and graduate within that project lifetime. So we&#8217;ve got to think about the kids that are junior high school right now, because when the projects actually start, they&#8217;re ready for work. So how can we prep them and get them involved right off the bat instead of going out, you know, getting educated and then go out and looking for a job. And the North has had a brain drain for so long. All of our doctors, our lawyers, our business people, our environmentalists, all moved to Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver because that&#8217;s where the work is for the type of education that they have or they took. So the scale, you know, is larger than anything we&#8217;ve had before, and now we&#8217;ve got to move that and say, okay, the reality is we have a small population, right? And we&#8217;ve got to match the demand for labour, for infrastructure, for resources, etc., that Jackson just talked about. That&#8217;s that&#8217;s a lot. So but the opportunity is that we got to start doing that work now, the planning, the communication and the cooperation that we all need to engulf to make things happen in the North. That&#8217;s that&#8217;s an opportunity. It&#8217;s not a challenge and it&#8217;s going to be game changing.
Jaimie Lickers: If we do it right. I think I think it could be.
Chief Ernest Betsina, Dettah, Yellowknives Dene First Nation: As I mentioned before, the lack of capacity for the Indigenous government because we have a small, small administration government. We have we have hard enough time to administer our own First Nation, let alone the the big infrastructure projects that come in, come in down the road. And as Chief, I&#8217;m here to protect our our rights and our land.
Kelly McLeod, President, Nihtat Gwich’in Council: Thank you. Mahsi. Our biggest challenge at times is being recognized as rights holders within our within our communities and not being treated like just stakeholders checking a box and being pushed through, you know, the systems that are in place and effectively just, you know, treat it as somebody looking to bid on a project. That&#8217;s not who we are. We we are fundamental to the success of these projects and how industry, Canada and, you know, we interact with each other is is super important because we can&#8217;t grow our northern economy and our community economies without actually participating in it. And, you know, essentially. Yeah. But at the reality is we&#8217;re not participating in it to the capacity that we should be, you know, and the fact that we&#8217;re well established into our nation&#8217;s histories and, you know, our settled land claims or our self-government agreements, and, in fact, we&#8217;re having this conversation is evidence of challenges. And how do we move away from that status quo of what it what it always was to what it could be? And we&#8217;re super thankful for the opportunities. We recognize them. You know, it&#8217;s it&#8217;s generational, multi-generational. But how do we make sure that it&#8217;s done right? And how do we make sure that our people are benefiting and not suffering from these major projects? Because we&#8217;ve seen it in the past. We see the highs, we see the lows, and we struggle with some of the highest rates of suicide per capita across Canada. And, you know, the the mental health and wellness of our people, the addictions, drugs are rampant in our communities in the North today. And how can we, you know, mitigate those and get our people healthy so that they can participate? And we&#8217;re not just seeing the effects. And sometimes those are negative of these major projects. So we&#8217;re open for discussion and willing to have those discussions and those tough discussions. So lots of challenges, lots of opportunities. Mahsi.
Grand Chief Jackson Lafferty, Tlicho Nation: I see this as an economic reconciliation. It&#8217;s a balancing act. Where I have to reiterate, our ancestors and also our elders have always stressed the fundamental importance of caribou in our in our backyard. You know, it&#8217;s when the rotary resources, when the first initial discussion took place several years back, it was through Lockhart area on the eastern side of the Northwest Territories. Both Nations came together and other Nations as well. We said, no, that&#8217;s a heartland of caribou. You cannot go through that area. And there was an initiative going forward without engagement of Indigenous rights holders. And we came to the table. We we made our peace. We made our statement. We we&#8217;ve yeah, we made a statement through our elders. And finally, the premier listened to us and put a stop on the Lockhart area. And we went more on the west side. Sure, they&#8217;ll still be impact, but the most minimal impact on caribou as we can. And but at the same time, fully utilizing traditional knowledge committees, the Social Economic Committee as well, because those are expertise at the community level, even at the territorial level. And like when I first stated, they&#8217;re like PhD when it comes to bush skills and harvesters. So those are individuals that are on the committee that we still have to utilize throughout the transition of this project. And we have boots on the ground, we have the guardianship and so forth that we&#8217;re fully utilizing the Yellowknives Dene First Nations, also doing the same thing on the bare land. So utilizing those expertise at the same time creating opportunities for our young generation to get involved. And so that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing. We&#8217;re opening the doors for young generation to get involved, to gain some more experience at that level. And yeah, just getting us involved. Engage us as Indigenous government, Indigenous business holders, and we have our rights as well. We own the land. We know what we&#8217;re talking about in the Northwest Territories. We&#8217;re doing things differently and you&#8217;ll see more. There could be a model that others can follow as well. But the two Nations that came together signed an MOU. Now identifying the actual corridor going forward. It&#8217;s we’re making history in the Northwest Territories. You know two Nations very powerful Nation coming together and now opening a door to other Indigenous governments around us, how they can participate on the project, because everybody&#8217;s going to benefit. You know, we&#8217;re not we&#8217;re not talking about a couple thousand here and there. We&#8217;re talking billion that federal government announced. And how can each individual organization or Indigenous governments can benefit? Because as for the Northwest Territories, the Northwest Territories should benefit and not just the two Nations coming as a spearheaded of the Indigenous led project, but inviting others as well. So with that, we&#8217;re creating opportunities for our future generations to come, because they&#8217;re the ones who are take take over as a legacy that we&#8217;re leaving behind. Those are sitting on the table here because we&#8217;re not just doing this for ourselves as leaders here today, but future generations to come. Even myself have five kids and four grandkids, and I&#8217;m worried about them when it comes to employment, training and business prospects. Then we need the education in the Northwest Territories as well to to boost our education. Not only that, but you know, this whole project Arctic Economy and Security Corridor will create a huge investment into our infrastructure and also capturing what Chief Betsina was saying, the lack of capacity building. So it&#8217;s going to capture that, you know, with the investment from federal government is identifying we&#8217;re lacking our abilities are transferable skills training jobs and so forth. So they&#8217;re giving us opportunity. Let&#8217;s be proactive. And we are jumping on board on that and ahead of time. And yeah, being at the decision making table. So getting us as Indigenous government involved right from the start making a huge difference. We&#8217;re leading the way. And we&#8217;re also in the driver&#8217;s seat of this mega one mega project that&#8217;s before us. And there&#8217;s other three projects that will be involved as well. And more specifically on the Department of National Defence, because it&#8217;s Arctic sovereignty, Arctic security, and along the corridor, it&#8217;s going to be there for years to come. Once it&#8217;s constructed, we have our own law making authority. So when it comes to wildlife land management, water management, we can make those laws as Tlicho government and have our own qualified people trained to enforce those laws along the highway, security, highway and whatnot. So it is a tremendous opportunity for our nations to move forward. So it is going to be a very exciting time in the Northwest. Territories for once. And yeah, we&#8217;re we&#8217;re embarking on it very proactive way.
Jaimie Lickers: Thank you. Grand Chief. And thank you all for joining us today for this incredibly important discussion.
The Federal Defence Industrial Strategy represents one of the most significant nation building exercises this country has ever seen, but promises to consult and engage with Indigenous communities cannot be left to fall by the wayside. Indigenous peoples across the country, particularly in the North, must be meaningfully consulted and be able to reap the benefits of these multibillion dollar investments. We&#8217;ll be watching next steps, including the upcoming Major Projects Office announcement, very closely. Thank you so much for each of you, for being here and for sharing your insights with us today. Mahsi.

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Building the North together: Advancing Canada’s Arctic sovereignty through meaningful Indigenous participation

Building the North together: Advancing Canada’s Arctic sovereignty through meaningful Indigenous participation

Building the North together: Advancing Canada’s Arctic sovereignty through meaningful Indigenous participation

Building the North together: Advancing Canada’s Arctic sovereignty through meaningful Indigenous participation

Indigenous Markets

Jaimie Lickers

Senior Vice-President, Indigenous Markets

CIBC Commercial Banking