Progressive Aboriginal Relations important to Scotiabank

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Scotiabank has a long history of supporting the Aboriginal community, through sponsoring scholarships, events and programs, and supporting Aboriginal business initiatives. Now Scotiabank hopes to measure, and build on, their successes in developing good Aboriginal relations through membership in the Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) program.

"We are the only financial institution that has committed to PAR at this point, so it feels really nice to sort of be a leader in that," said Michele Baptiste, national manager of Aboriginal relations with Scotiabank.

Involvement in the PAR program, she explained, will provide the bank with a way to develop a "national, holistic approach to Aboriginal relations . . . encompassing all the important parts-employment, business, community involvement.

"I think it helps us with consistency in terms of having goals, so everybody is aware of what the goals are; that as a corporation, we can probably achieve more when everybody is on the same page. And PAR, I think, is that framework for everybody to be on the same page. And for me, within the bank, it's huge. It actually allows me to create that plan. And it assists me with getting support from the rest of the bank, from the people within the field that we need the support from in order to make this program successful. We'll have a plan, as opposed to just going and doing whatever we can do," Baptiste said.

The bank has already accomplished quite a lot in terms of developing good Aboriginal relations, Baptiste explained.

"We've been heavily involved in a lot of Aboriginal initiatives, both grassroots and national, from the community involvement perspective. We're the second lead sponsor with Casino Rama for the Aboriginal Music Awards. We have the Aboriginal scholarships through the CCAB (Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business)-we're into our fourth year of those; it's a six year commitment. And we've sponsored things like hot breakfast programs in First Nations schools, traditional gatherings, powwows, Aboriginal business conferences. So we've sponsored a lot of things across the country.

"In terms of employment, my position was initially national Aboriginal employment. So in that position I created an Aboriginal employment strategy for the bank. And we based the strategy on the medicine wheel and the teachings of the medicine wheel, in terms of all the components need to exist in balance together. We're also going to be potentially entering into a partnership with the Aboriginal Human Resource Development Council to assist us and our HR managers in recruitment and retention of Aboriginal people across the country," she said.

"On the sustainability side, I think education is part of it. We offer a number of different things that we go into the communities to do," Baptiste said. "One of them is, we have a Scotia Trust branch manager that does a lot of work. She's an Algonquin woman. And she goes into communities and does trustee training. So when a community puts their, let's say if they settle a land claim, or Casino Rama disbursement dollars or things like that, and puts it into a trust with Scotia Trust, she goes in and does actual trustee training so that the trustees for the band have a really good understanding of how everything works, and so they can be a power to manage their own funds with the help of the Scotiabank.

"In terms of business, we have four on-reserve branches, and we do a number of initiatives, funding initiatives through those branches.

Casino Rama's our customer. We've helped build the casino and also the entertainment centre, and we're working on the hotel with them. And I guess from a small business perspective, we're really trying to reach out more to Aboriginal small businesses as well."

In addition to helping Scotiabank to develop a framework for its Aboriginal relations initiatives, involvement in the PAR program will also provide the institution with something it's been lacking up util now-a consistent tool for measuring how it's doing in Aboriginal communities.

"This PAR program was developed by Aboriginal people, so they created the yardstick. And I think it's just an all around good thing for the bank to do in terms of measuring their success in the communities, and in recognition too. They operate by recognition. I think everybody likes to know that what they're doing is worthwhile," Baptiste said.

"We want to be recognized within the community as making this commitment. . . and I guess we just want to be able to work with the communities to make this program successful for all of us. For the communities and for the bank."