Billion dollar boom: UNDRIP opens door to First Nations partnerships
The benefits to First Nations that participate in the expanding energy sector in B.C. will be measured in billions of dollars.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted unanimously by the B.C. legislature, throws open the door to “economic reconciliation” on an unprecedented scale.
The implementation of UNDRIP will reduce uncertainty for business, said Fort Nelson First Nation Chief Sharleen Gale.
A consent-based model means that business leaders will need to form partnerships with First Nations and incorporate that into their business model, she said.
“When companies come to First Nations on Day 1, it promotes certainty that projects will be built on time, that they align with our values and that there won’t be litigation,” said Gale, chairwoman of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition. “We don’t want to be in the courts, we want to take equity stakes and participate in the economy in our territories.”
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the emerging LNG export industry.
Northern B.C. has reserves of natural gas that could fuel domestic consumption and exports for the next 150 years, nearly all of it on territory that was not ceded by its Indigenous occupants, according to the First Nations LNG Alliance.
First Nations are seizing the opportunity to get full value from those resources for the long-term benefit of their members, said Gale.
The Haisla First Nation has a 25-year export licence and plans for a floating LNG plant south of Kitimat.
It also has a partnership with the Lax Kw’alaams, Metlakatla and Nisga’a First Nations with a goal to use LNG to fight climate change.
The Squamish Nation recently signed a $1.1 billion benefit agreement with Woodfibre LNG to build a plant on the site of a decommissioned pulp mill.
More than two dozen First Nations have signed benefit agreements related to natural gas expansion in the past four years and 16 First Nations are partners in the Pacific Trail Pipeline, which will end in Kitimat.
First Nations leaders and businesspeople will gather in Vancouver on Jan. 14 at the
Finding a Path to Shared Prosperity conference to share lessons from an Indigenous economy that is poised to grow exponentially in the next five years.
The conference will feature Indigenous entrepreneurs and First Nations engaged in property development, tourism, transportation, aquaculture and resource extraction.
The Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business is projecting Canada’s Indigenous economy will grow from $30 billion a year today to $100 billion by 2024.
There are about 50,000 Indigenous businesses in
Canada, and they are growing at nine times the rate of non-Aboriginal businesses, according to the council.
“It gives me goosebumps to think of the opportunities that are coming over the next 10 years,” said Haisla Nation Chief Crystal Smith, chair of the First Nations LNG Alliance.
The LNG Canada project will mean jobs, training, capacity-building and spinoff business opportunities, all accomplished in alignment with Haisla values and goals.