'Is it happening at the pace that we all want? No, it's not. Our biggest enemy in it is the machine that runs it. It's a really big machine,' Chief Cadmus Delorme said.
Indigenous people and communities must be part of the conversation when it comes to future economic trends and prosperity in Canada, two prominent Indigenous leaders say.
Tabatha Bull, president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, and Cadmus Delorme, chief of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, recently took part in a presentation at the University of Regina titled “The Future of the Indigenous Economy.”
Both Bull and Delorme were asked whether the Canadian economy can be reimagined so that Indigenous entrepreneurs, businesses and communities can be included in the country’s prosperity while still respecting Indigenous values and aspirations.
“My answer is yes, because it has to be,” said Bull, a member of Nipissing First Nation in northern Ontario who currently lives in Toronto.
“We really, as a country, will not be able to move forward on clean energy transformation, on looking at where we’re faced right now with supply shortages and where we’re faced with workforce shortages, if we don’t ensure we are including Indigenous people and communities and businesses in all of our conversations.”
Delorme said some progress is being made on the Indigenous economic front.
“It’s happening,” he said. “Is it happening at the pace that we all want? No, it’s not. Our biggest enemy in it is the machine that runs it. It’s a really big machine.”
Delorme said progress is at times hindered by aspects of the Indian Act, the legislation enacted by the Canadian government in 1876. As an example of how difficult it is to build on Indian Act status land, Delorme cited a Tim Hortons franchise that was opened on Cowessess First Nation property in 2021.
“We had to budget an extra $100,000 to convince the Department of Justice that a Tim Hortons was a low risk to Canada on status land,” Delorme said.
Bull agreed that land codes and land management acts can significantly hinder Indigenous entrepreneurs.
“If you are in a community and want to lease part of a land or develop the land and you don’t have a land code agreed to and approved by the federal government, you cannot make those business deals without going through that process,” she said.
It can be a time-consuming initiative to get an authorized go-ahead on a project, Bull added during the presentation that was moderated by Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair in regional innovation at the University of Saskatchewan’s Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.
“They kind of go through a process to determine what parts of their land will be residential, what will be for business, what could possibly be leased,” Bull said.
“And that has to be approved by their community but also by the federal government. That process is still taking five, seven years for approval at the federal government level.”
Both Bull and Delorme said that a 2019 procurement mandate letter from the federal government is a step in the right direction to assist Indigenous entrepreneurs and businesses. The mandate stipulates that the Canadian government works towards a minimum five per cent of all federal contracts awarded to Indigenous businesses.
“We firmly believe that procurement is a way that corporations can support growing Indigenous economy without having to spend more on your budget. It’s just directing where you are spending your money to ensure that you are supporting Indigenous business,” Bull said.
Delorme, who is in favour of the federal mandate, said he frequently hears questions about why Indigenous people are getting a special procurement.
“We have a whole society that’s sitting there saying, ‘Well, why the heck do they get special treatment?’ Well, the thing is, in 2023 we can’t just assume that there is equality,” Delorme said.
“Indigenous people have only been thinking economically and welcomed into the economic world since the late ’80s. And this country is 165-plus years old.”
Sam Laskaris is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Windspeaker. The LJI program is federally funded by the Government of Canada.
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