Thank you for the question. I think it's a really welcome question, Mr. McLeod. It's a pleasure seeing you and several of the individuals here today.

When we talk about this panel and the importance of indigenous economic development beyond the challenges of identifying businesses, tourism is a really good example of where the challenges manifest. When we talk about authentic indigenous tourism, that means indigenous tourism that's owned and operated by indigenous people. It's very important to consumers, whether they are domestic or international, and whether it's in Northwest Territories or anywhere else in the country.

The number one challenge we have continues to be around access to capital. I do know this is in the report—that's part of the recommendations—but access to capital needs to be discussed in a more complex way. It's not about just enhancing access through indigenous financial institutions; the challenge is that the investments that enable indigenous tourism to build to reach its potential are woefully inadequate.

We've done an economic analysis with the Conference Board of Canada, and we've shared that with our partners over this last year. There needs to be an investment of about $2.6 billion across the country and a significant investment in places like Northwest Territories. That's to help businesses make sure that they can compete at a market and export-ready level.

The potential is there, but if you don't know how to work in the sales channels, and if those indigenous operators, whether they're Inuit, first nations or Métis, don't have that infrastructure and the ability to execute the sale, to market and to promote in an indigenous-led way, it's really difficult to compete. The space is being occupied by non-indigenous marketing organizations that are driving visitors to more non-indigenous-led experiences, even though this is part of tourism under Destination Canada.

If we're serious about indigenous tourism in this country, it's going to take more than that. There are just not enough resources in the system to build those businesses. For example, in the Northwest Territories, there could be tremendous opportunity, but they're going to need to build proper accommodations and infrastructure that just aren't there. Small loans of $50,000, $100,000 or $250,000 are simply not going to be enough. We're talking about developing major infrastructure so that, in the long run, the return on those investments would be significant. Until we address that challenge, I think we're going to be seeing modest benefits.

In terms of the economic benefits, tourism in this country is a big business. Most of you may or may not know that 60% to 70% of Canadians want to enjoy indigenous experiences. For international visitors, it's one in three, but we only see 2% of the sale right now. There's a significant gap between the potential and what we can execute, because there are just not enough authentic indigenous experiences, so there's that element.

The other element that I want to quickly touch on, whether it's in the Northwest Territories or elsewhere, is that we need laws around identity protection and cultural protection. The gift shop market in this country is huge, and the number of made-in-China, made-in-India, made-in-everywhere inauthentic indigenous printed products being sold in gift shops in this country are worth billions of dollars. Getting proper legislation through indigenous economic development or economic strategy around making sure that indigenous products benefit indigenous artists and indigenous communities will in itself drive literally billions of dollars of important revenues back to indigenous people.

I know that people have different views on the U.S. right now, but for all its challenges, the one thing they've done right is that they do have cultural protections for the artists and the sale of artisan products, which we do not have in Canada. We need to fix that now, not in five years. That in itself will be a massive economic benefit to the artists and will drive money back to many different communities and families. So that's—

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