Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. It's an honour to be here to provide TD's perspective on issues and challenges regarding access to capital.

By way of personal background, I'm an Inuk from Nunatsiavut, a region in northern Labrador. Nunatsiavut was the last Inuit land claim to be settled in Canada, and it's going celebrating its tenth year of the land claim implementation this year.

While I'm the vice-president for aboriginal banking at TD, I also have the honour of serving as chair of the Nunatsiavut Group of Companies, which is the economic arm of the Nunatsiavut government.

TD proudly banks many aboriginal governments and their businesses across the country. Our goal is to be the bank of choice for aboriginal families, businesses, and communities. We try to be innovative and flexible in tailoring our services around the diverse needs of aboriginal communities and their peoples, and we're working hard to earn the trust and confidence of aboriginal communities from coast to coast to coast.

TD's original aboriginal banking strategy began nearly 20 years ago when we partnered with two first nations organizations to create an aboriginal bank. In 1996, the Saskatchewan Indian Equity Foundation and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations chose TD as one of the founding partners of the First Nations Bank of Canada and the provider of management support and back office capabilities.

We believed in creating an aboriginal bank that would be owned by aboriginal people, managed by aboriginal people, and serving aboriginal people.

A shared governance model was developed to transition the First Nations Bank toward aboriginal control and self-sufficiency.

In 2012, FNBC launched its own banking platform and became fully independent of TD. Today, FNBC is a competitive financial institution widely owned by many aboriginal shareholders and TD remains as a minority shareholder.

In the last year and a half TD has recently embarked on a journey to further strengthen our commitment to aboriginal peoples with the creation of the Aboriginal Banking Group. This group, which I lead, provides specialized banking expertise in support of commercial banking teams across the country that service aboriginal customers. We are dedicated to making banking more convenient for aboriginal communities, businesses, and people by developing new products and services, and by enhancing existing ones at TD.

Wealth creation and accumulation continues to positively impact those aboriginal communities through successful negotiations of claim settlements, and impact and resource revenue-sharing agreements. A preferred and very effective solution for managing this new wealth is through the utilization of trusts.

In 2007, TD Aboriginal Trust and Investment Services have provided support and advice to aboriginal communities in planning and implementing these trust and investment solutions. TD has over $1.5 billion in assets under administration and under investment management, making us an industry leader in this segment.

In 2011 TD Economics released a report that quantified the aboriginal market, which included the purchasing power of aboriginal people, businesses, and governments. It is estimated that by 2016, just next year, the combined income of those three sectors will be $32 billion, which represents a growing market for financial institutions and indeed many other private sector companies.

But frankly, this number could higher if the stakeholders—for instance, the Government of Canada, aboriginal governments, and the financial sector—could collectively identify and act on innovative ways to address issues around access to capital.

We at TD, like my peers in the other banks, provide capital to aboriginal governments and their economic development corporations primarily in the form of lending facilities and more recently raising capital in the Canadian and U.S. bond markets. To date we have over $600 million in business banking relationships across the country and this number continues to grow.

The deals we see involve financing for an array of different needs and opportunities, anywhere from community infrastructure such as schools and water treatment facilities, to renewable energy, to construction equipment for an economic development corporation.

But I can tell you that we're not able to provide financing in all circumstances. In some cases, an aboriginal customer is looking to participate in a business deal that we would consider as beyond our risk appetite. In this situation access to capital would be severely restricted regardless of whether the borrower was aboriginal or not.

When determining if we are able to provide financing to an aboriginal project, we will particularly focus on three things: the strength of the borrower—in this case the aboriginal government or its economic development corporation—the source of repayment or the ability to service the debt, and security.

As we all know, and as Max previously mentioned, section 89 of the Indian Act prohibits lenders from taking any security of real and personal property on reserve. While this has been a significant barrier in the past, I think it's obvious now that all the major banks are comfortable with this reality and we provide financing on reserve.

The other considerations, strength of the borrower and source of repayment, may prove to be difficult obstacles to overcome, which will unfortunately result in a lack of access to capital for a community that's in serious need of infrastructure and investment. It’s in situations like this where the federal government could provide additional support that could help to offset some of those concerns.

One area I believe warrants consideration is federal government guarantees. Currently, federal ministerial guarantees are offered for on-reserve housing only. For any other investment in infrastructure, either the first nation is the sole funder or it receives some level of grant support from the federal government over a multi-year time frame, which will normally not cover the total cost of the asset. I believe some creative thinking is necessary to determine how the federal government could use this tool to open up access to capital for those first nations that need to address their infrastructure gap.

One example of loan guarantees being used effectively is that of the aboriginal loan guarantee program offered by the Government of Ontario. According to the website of the Ontario Financing Authority, the guarantee supports aboriginal participation in renewable green energy infrastructure including transmission projects and wind, solar, and hydroelectric generation projects. The program was announced in 2009, and it provides a provincial guarantee for a loan to an aboriginal corporation to purchase up to 75% of an aboriginal corporation's equity in an eligible project up to a maximum of $50 million. As of July 2014, the aboriginal loan guarantee program had leveraged significant investments, with loan guarantees supporting investments in eight aboriginal communities representing over 10,000 people. Those numbers are probably a little dated; it's probably more than that now. This program provides alternative non-government funding sources to a first nation to participate in an economic venture. I’m proud to say that TD has financed a number of aboriginal equity loans for renewable energy projects and we continue to look at other deals.

While an expanded application of federal government guarantees is definitely not a panacea that will address all issues around access to capital, it could be an important piece of the puzzle that will enable more communities to make the necessary investments that will build sustainable local economies.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

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