Thank you.

Hello, everyone. It's good to see you all today. It's a real honour to be here.

I'm with the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association. We have a head office not too far from here.

I'll summarize my notes that I submitted, so I'll be done in five minutes. I saw how many pages Matthew had, and I don't want to be cut off. I'll quickly summarize what I have.

First of all, NACCA has been around for 30-some years. We basically lend money, development dollars, to indigenous entrepreneurs across Canada from coast to coast to coast.

In the early 1990s, the federal government put out $200 million or so to these capital corporations across Canada. We lent that money out and were paid back, and then we lent that money out and were paid back. We have grown that $200 million into $3.4 billion of loans over the last 30 years.

Where I think we can bring value to this table is that in lending money to indigenous entrepreneurs from coast to coast to coast, we get information from them when they fill out an application. Just think about the information that you would have to put on a loan application. We have boots on the ground across the country. When people don't pay their loans, we know.

When COVID hit, it was very important for the government to know what was going on out there. What better source would there be to know who's paying their loans in that given month? Who would collectively have that information across the country for indigenous communities in the business sector but NACCA? That's the nature of our business.

I think that's the value that we can bring here today. It's knowing the information that we've been able to collect with the individual financial institutes across the country. It's collectively what NACCA has been able to provide on what's going on out there and the most and latest information on what sectors are growing, what types of businesses are there, how many employees are being created, what types of revenues are being generated, who's paying their loans and stuff like that.

I think what we've been able to see over the last 20 years are the indigenous communities that are most active and, dare I say, aggressive in applying the new laws and policies that have been coming down. Those include the fiscal management act and the land codes that have been created through the land management act, and they have had tremendous benefits. We know the constraints of the Indian Act. We've heard this for too long now. We know that these laws have been applied, and those who have been applying them the best have been able to really grow in their communities. The correlation between the amount of activity that's going on in a community and their ability to apply those new laws and policies is very clear.

We think that this idea of moving forward to the taxation question and how that might roll out and what could be done is a very important question. We do believe that those laws and those policies have created a better environment. We're trying to live within the Indian Act, basically. Creating these things will only do well for those who are going to apply it.

This idea that now that we can extend it to a tax regime for businesses that are doing work in first nations' backyards is a good thing. The three that you brought up in your motion—I just want to be sure of my time, by the way—included the excise taxes, the ATM casino sales and the carbon taxes.

The thing I want to say about excise taxes is that through the loans we give, a lot of those clients are providing services to first nations, and they would be tax exempt. I'm not so sure of the idea of getting tax revenues through excise taxes on reserve from tobacco sales, cigarettes, etc., but if there's something that can be done, great.

With respect to casinos and ATMs, obviously there are a lot of non-indigenous people who frequent these places. There's probably a better tax base from that.

Finally, on the carbon taxes, it's an issue for you guys to deal with in Ottawa. We can see that a lot of those industries are right in the backyard of first nations communities. If some regime could be created that could provide benefit back to these communities so that they could create the infrastructure that's needed, it would just seem to make sense, especially since many of those industries are affecting the traditional way of life and the food sources of those people.

I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.