Task force proposes a new relationship

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The National Aboriginal Financing Task Force, composed of 13 volunteer Aboriginal leaders, tabled its final report on Nov. 19 on how to increase access to capital funding for Aboriginal people. The report, The Promise of the Future: Achieving Economic Self Sufficiency Through Access to Capital, outlined 21 recommendations for Aboriginal leaders, the private sector, the federal government, and the provincial and territorial governments to work together to improve access to capital.

"We came up with the goal to find creative solutions to access capital to Native communities," said Larry Sault, the task force chairman and chief of the Mississaugas of The New Credit First Nation. "We started out with six sub-communities - communications, taxation, capital and institutional development, regulatory issues, and human resources. We had to try to find the relevance of all these issues in order to find benefit for First Nation communities across Canada."

One of the initial accomplishments of the task force was the bringing together of four national Aboriginal groups to address these issues, the Assembly of First Nations, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Métis National Council. Even though the MNC eventually pulled out of the task force, it did receive constant updates on its progress.

"It certainly was a job in itself to maintain direction and to stay in focus," said Sault. "When you have government offices, different corporations, financial institutions and Aboriginal leaders, you've got a real challenge keeping focus."

Jane Stewart, the minister of Indian Affairs, was pleased with the report when it was presented to her on Nov. 19, but the department hasn't said what, if any, of the recommendations will be implemented. Sault, however, expects that these recommendations will be taken seriously by the federal government. That the report "would not become a dust collector" was one of the reasons he agreed to chair the task force.

"We've been studied to death, and I don't want to become another statistic sitting on the shelf in Ottawa," he said.

The other reason was that it would be an Aboriginal driven process, with positive and achievable goals.

The 21 recommendations are broken into four categories. The first category challenges Aboriginal leaders to publish elected council decisions in a new Aboriginal Gazette for potential investors or business partners; to develop education and training plans for Aboriginal youth to learn financial management skills, and encourage them to seek jobs in the financial and management sectors; to consider new ways to develop already existing capital; to advocate changes to legislation that would allow for reserve property to be used for credit and collateral; to recommend amendments to Section 89 of the Indian Act;

to improve access to housing capital; and to increase access to the Internet.

Recommendations laid out for the private sector include the participation of chartered banks in the evolution of Aboriginal capital corporations; to develop training in financial matters for Aboriginal organizations; and to form a working group within the Canadian Bankers Association to look at Aboriginal financing.

The federal government was asked to participate in the evolution of Aboriginal capital corporations; to designate Aboriginal capital corporations as approved lenders; to have the Department of Indian Affairs increase access to bid and performance bonding for Aboriginal contractors; to encourage Aboriginal sub-contracting; to negotiate with First Nations leaders fiscal arrangements to assist First Nations governments in improving their fiscal base; to expand guidelines for Aboriginal capital corporations so they can deliver Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation housing loans; to recommend an Aboriginal window under the 1997 Immigrant Investor Program; to allow Aboriginal representation to future financial task forces; and to harmonize alleconomic development programming.

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