Action not words: How the AIOC is catalyzing Indigenous economic reconciliation

Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I’m your host Lisa Raitt and in this podcast I’m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business, with some guests along the way. And welcome back to The Raitt Stuff. I am so delighted to have a repeat guest on today. And the reason being is that she has been doing so much work this year in moving forward something so important to not only our economy, but to our country in general. And that is Chana is the CEO of the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, otherwise known as AIOC, because everyone uses the shorthand version of it. The AIOC, for those who may not know, leads initiatives to drive Indigenous prosperity and independence through economic partnerships across Alberta’s vital sectors. So far, AIOC has been quite the success story. It’s facilitated over $720 million in investments across eight transactions. That’s impacting directly 43 indigenous communities. And that has prompted the government to look at the program and actually give it more capital to the tune of $3 billion. And I have to say that being a former politician, that’s not an easy thing to do. Chana has a background in financial services. She’s a fervent advocate for inclusion diversity. She’s a member of the Frog Lake First Nation Treaty Six Territory, and she holds a degree in economics from the University of Alberta. Welcome back, Chana. Thanks for joining me again on The Raitt Stuff.

Chana Martineau: Thanks Lisa, I’m so excited to be here. I always enjoy our conversations.

Lisa Raitt: Well, I’m so delighted that I run into you all the time because that means we’re both out there trying to get the word out and trying to facilitate these kinds of important resource deals and important commercial deals happening in Canada with Indigenous communities. It’s now five years for the AIOC. But before we dive into that, I know this myself already, but I want to ask you this from a personal point of view. Why are you so passionate about the work you do? I mean, like I said, you’re traveling all over the place and you’re speaking at so many conferences and doing so many deals. What drives you?

Chana Martineau: Thank you so much for the warm introduction and for having me. I’ve got to tell you, this is more than a job for me. It’s more like a calling. I have long wanted to marry my Indigenous heritage with my finance career. So I was one of the first people in my family to go to university. my grandfather was one of 13 and my dad was one of seven. So you just want to extrapolate, that’s a lot of people.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah.

Chana Martineau: I was the first person that had that opportunity. And I never forgot where it came from and I always wanted to find a way to give back. And while I did that here and there through not-for-profits and different things, I never quite found the right thing. And so when it came, so I came onto the board of AIOC early in its tenure. And in my first board meeting, the CEO had resigned. And so we were out of a CEO. And I was so passionate about the work that we were doing. Seven months later, I ended up in the chair. And so sometimes I say, you get what you need, not what you want. I had a great job that I was really happy with in banking, but you know, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to really make a tremendous impact. And so the reason that I travel so much and talk to people so much about it, because I think we will look back at this time as a time that we change the way that Indigenous people interact with the rest of Canada. This is an opportunity for Indigenous people to fully participate in the economy in a way they have not had the opportunity to do before. And so our momentum is carrying others with us. There’s others that are inspired. The federal program is launching. The BC program is launching. You know, we’ve made tremendous impact so far in Alberta, but there’s more to do and the time is now. And so I just want to capitalize on this momentum that we’ve created and spread as much positivity and positive impact as we can.

Lisa Raitt: Thanks very much, Chana. I’m going to pick up on something that you mentioned in there about other provinces and other loan guarantees. But I I’m going to make a bold statement that I think that you sit in a very unique position in Canada, where you probably seal where you probably see almost every deal that involves an Indigenous community in every sector, because people will come to the AIOC to get help and understanding how to do deals in other provinces. So you’re a unicorn as far as I’m concerned. You have a great view of what’s happening in the country. Tell me a little bit about other provinces and other loan guarantees. What kind of lessons are you giving to them as they set up their own systems?

Chana Martineau: Thanks so much, Lisa. It’s really an exciting place to be. Every province has their own take on it. Every province has their own economies that they’re looking to drive and every jurisdiction has its unique characteristics. So this is something that I didn’t really understand when I had spent my entire career in the private sector. The conversations are different at each with each order of government and their approaches are all different and that really I think reflects our journey as a nation frankly. So it’s been really interesting giving me a little insight into your journey in the political life what that must have been like and it’s challenging. We try to share our lessons learned. We try to share what’s worked here. The entrepreneurial nature of the Alberta government has been such a tremendous asset for us. They really come to us and say, what do you need to do more? How can we help you? How can we enable you? Oh, by the way, still don’t lose a nickel. The credit quality is absolutely job one, but enablement is also job one. If it’s job one and job one A. And so we’re always very mindful of the taxpayer and not impairing the Alberta government with a loan guarantee that’s potentially called. But that entrepreneurial spirit, let’s find a way to get it done. And so really proud of our experience, really happy to share that. I really talk about not being too prescriptive about outcomes. The program is about Indigenous economic participation and reconciliation. And it’s not a disguised version of your energy transition programs or jobs and economy or any of those things. It is about Indigenous economic participation and reconciliation. And then those other things all come out of doing something with a single purpose like that. So you get greater participation in the Indigenous economy. That drives new economic activity, it drives Indigenous employment, it also drives that lens on sustainable energy focus and development. And so you get that all. But if you try to layer in too many policy objectives, you end up not getting any of those things. 

Lisa Raitt: Alberta has probably been approached by a number of provinces, but from my take right now, BC is looking to set up a program. Manitoba is looking, Saskatchewan is looking, the feds are looking. Probably Ontario, they have one, but they’re probably looking at trying to expand it, if not refurbish it. Does that give you hope across the country that other provinces are looking at helping Indigenous communities seek and get economic reconciliation?

Chana Martineau: Absolutely. It gives me so much hope. Even the conversations have changed even from one year ago. One year ago, a lot of the conversations were all the reasons why this wasn’t a great idea. Now the conversations are changing to, we want to do this or we are underway. We’ve made announcements, we’re starting the ball rolling. Now it’s how and trying to get those programs up and running. And so we give advice and suggestions and lessons learned because what works in Alberta is not going to work everywhere. So we want to help. And part of our mandate is really to help those programs stand up in a way that we can all partner together. Because it doesn’t make any sense, and we’ve seen this so many times in Canada, to have all these disparate systems that can’t work together. Let’s build a system, a network of infrastructure to support economic, Indigenous economic participation and reconciliation in a way that we can all do this together. And really, I say this a lot, together we can move mountains.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, we can. I mentioned off the top eight transactions so far. Can you give us a flavor as to what kinds of transactions come across your desk?

Chana Martineau: Sure, lots come across our desk and we have to find a way to do more. Right now, we have focused on large infrastructure projects. The reason for that is there’s long-term contracted cash flows. So when you think about the nature of a loan guarantee, if you’re a taxpayer, you don’t want the government to have to pay out $100 million to cover a debt that we underwrote that went sideways. even if it’s on a short-term basis. And so we try to stick to very high-quality credit assets that have a very strong cash flow profile. That also provides security for the loan payments and provides income to the nations that participate net of loan payments. So to date on the transactions that we’ve done, Indigenous communities are receiving more per year than the Alberta government has set up on our administrations from the beginning. And so I think that’s a really good return on investment for the provincial dollars. We have not had a loan guarantee called on this approach. And so we are now gradually and slowly expanding with a measured focus into broader areas now that we’ve tried and tested a few different transaction types. So the Cascade power plant is one that was our first Greenfield project new construction that and it takes some creativity for the partners to deal with things like cost overruns. How are we going to do that without impairing the loan guarantee. And then we’ve done six other Brownfield projects that are in existence with existing cashflow profile. The Tamarack Valley transaction that we just announced, we had two phases to that. One a year ago, December, 2023, and then an expansion just recently announced. And those are newer assets, construction had been completed. So we’re looking at new and different ways to do these things, but really wanted to start from a very strong credit profile and something that generated cash flows that the communities could count on.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, I think I once had a chief tell me that he gets so many proposals like you across his desk. It is really difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. You don’t know what is a real deal and what is speculation of somebody just trying to kick the tires because when you put out in the window, there’s $3 billion loan guarantee available, you attract a lot of people who think that this is same old same old free money that’s coming their way. What kind of challenges do you think Indigenous communities face in terms of sorting out these kinds of deals?

Chana Martineau: So many, we have so many challenges even. Capacity is one. So when you look at Chief and Council, they are doing everything for their communities. The chief is the spiritual leader, so he will attend and speak at funerals and celebrations. They are running social programs. They have a tremendous breadth on their plate for their community. And large scale infrastructure investments isn’t their background. So even just to get Mindshare to understand these projects is significant. And when you’re thinking about you know, do I invest money on hiring an investment professional or do I, you know, do social programming to make sure that we’re treating the addictions crisis on my, for my people. You know, where do you choose? And it’s so difficult and, and reserves and Métis settlements are so woefully underfunded that the challenges are real. And so trying to sort these things out are so difficult. We try to provide support for that. The communities really rely on us. We provide capacity grant funding so that they can hire advisors to work through. And then I think participating in our transactions provides a real learning experience and we walk that journey with all of the participants. So we help to bridge the two sides of the conversations. We help the Indigenous communities understand the capital markets language and we help the capital markets people understand the Indigenous perspectives. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s more of a collaborative approach and a creative approach than your typical corporate development transaction.

Lisa Raitt: Yep. And vendors or people making proposals should understand that time as we normally see it in a transaction is not necessarily the timeline you’re going to follow in such a transaction with an Indigenous community.

Chana Martineau: And you can understand, there’s just things about Indigenous culture that the Western world doesn’t get. And it makes so much sense to me now. like a funeral, a community funeral, the community shuts down. And so when I started in my work life, we would go home for my great-aunts and uncles’ funerals at home to Cold Lake area. And you know, my employers were like, well, you don’t get time off to go for like a great aunt or uncle, but to like this to us is very close family, right? But in the traditional Western world, that is not considered a close relation that you get time off work for a funeral, especially not to travel out of town. And so, you know, but you just need to understand that that just things just stop.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s one of the pieces of advice that we tend to give to clients who are interested in deals. You may come in and say you want to get it done in the third quarter next year. We’d love to be able to do that for you, but we do have to be mindful that the other party is going to set the pace.

Chana Martineau: And it’s a different kind of partnership. And I also tell those corporate partners, your leaders will be stronger and better leaders. They will be more empathetic leaders for this process and your organization will be better for it. But you need to have some patience and you need to have some perseverance and some creativity.

Lisa Raitt: So this is all very new for our listeners. They may not have heard necessarily how to go about doing business with Indigenous communities or on projects that involve Indigenous partnership. So let’s give them a little bit of help. What resources can we point to help folks who are interested and really want to see how they can partner with these communities? Where should they start?

Chana Martineau: I think it’s just understanding your neighbors, understand the communities that are close. to your assets, I’m talking about large infrastructure or in the parts that you want to do business. Go to their events, seek to meet people, get introductions if you can. A lot of companies come to our team and ask for suggestions and we’ll give them feedback, but we don’t lead those conversations. It’s very important that the leaders of the corporate partners invest their personal time. And get through that, seek to understand, go visit the communities, go to their celebrations. That will be an important first step to really carry on a productive conversation. And I really encourage people to invest time upfront, even if it’s a hard conversation, even if the relationship hasn’t gone the way that you have wanted it to or hoped that it would, if you’ve misstepped in the past, just own up to that and ask, how can we do better? How can we move forward together in a more productive way and be prepared to listen.

Lisa Raitt: Excellent words of advice, Chana. Thank you so much for joining me today. Happy fifth anniversary to the AIOC. And I’m really looking forward to hopefully having more deals with Alberta and with Alberta parties as we move forward through to economic reconciliation.

Chana Martineau: Thanks so much, Lisa. It’s been a pleasure as always.

Lisa Raitt: Thank you. You as well. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at [email protected]. Your interactions actually will make this better. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff.

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