Indigenous Ownership: Best Practices for Major Project Success

Key findings

• Industry proponents are shifting toward greater co-development of major projects alongside Indigenous communities. They’re enabling Indigenous co-ownership by taking on key project risks that they’re better placed to manage, including fluctuations in project revenues.
• Businesses owned by Indigenous communities generate critical revenue streams, training opportunities, and business connections that can facilitate Indigenous ownership of major projects. Greater government support for Aboriginal Financial Institutions that finance these businesses can further increase their impact.
• Loan guarantees reduce the cost of equity capital for Indigenous communities and make more projects possible. A federal government– backed loan guarantee program could spread this best practice across Canada.
• Reforms to environmental, social, and governance standards for major project financing are elevating lender expectations for project proponents. Indigenous-led shareholder advocacy has the potential to carry these reforms further, and lenders should support these efforts to strengthen project due diligence.
• Electric utilities across Canada use a range of procurement practices to support greater Indigenous ownership of clean energy projects. By laying out long-term procurement plans, they can also encourage more proposals from Indigenous-led clean energy partnerships.
• Equity co-investors, including pension funds, private equity firms, and angel investors, are filling financing gaps for Indigenous communities. Adding an Indigenous focus to existing federal investment attraction efforts would encourage these investors to inject more private capital into Indigenous-led major projects.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/indigenous-ownership_march2023.pdf