Drumbeats - Canadian Indigenous Investment Podcast

Jonathan Broer, Managing Director at Origin Merchant Partners, sets out how an independent adviser helps a Nation find the best lender and the right lender, when so many banks and government programmes are set up to lend to Indigenous groups.

Origin is an independent investment bank that, in Jonathan’s words, focuses only on advice. Jonathan joined in 2025 after more than 25 years as an investment banker and corporate executive, including at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, CIBC World Markets, Genuity Capital Markets and TD Securities.

In this episode:

Colby Delorme says some First Nations in Canada are approached with a new deal every day and can be given as little as three to eight weeks to assess it. In Part 2, the President of the Imagination Group of Companies sets out how nations decide which partnerships to pursue.

He describes the signals a nation reads in a first meeting, why engagement should begin at the planning stage, and why he expects Indigenous participation to move towards ownership, with risk, profit and decision-making shared.

Asked what would most surprise a sponsor or lender in London...

Indigenous equity deals in Canada tend to start at C$300 million, while most First Nations find it difficult to raise C$100 million, according to Colby Delorme. In the first of two conversations, the President of the Imagination Group of Companies sets out how nations are closing that gap.

Some are going to market for financing of around C$500 million, at times as a group of nations. Others are building from a smaller base, with First Nations corporations acquiring businesses worth C$1 million to C$3 million to grow or scale them.

For a project finance banker...

Canada's Pacific Link pipeline, the Trans Mountain Indigenous equity offer and LNG Canada's expansion give the Canada Investment Summit commitments their first implementation test.

Mark Magnacca and Robert Brant work through the week of 28 September to 2 October 2026 for UK and European institutional investors watching Canada closely.

They cover the one million barrel a day Pacific Link pipeline from Alberta to Roberts Bank in British Columbia, jointly led by Canada and Alberta, with Indigenous communities offered a minimum 10 per cent ownership interest through federal and Alberta loan guarantee programmes. They examine the collective 15 per cent Trans...

Nine First Nations Chiefs, nine different economies, in their own words. This special episode draws on the Drumbeats archive and our Summit stages in the City of London to bring together voices from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Each Chief speaks for themselves and their own nation, not for First Nations as a whole, on getting deals done, what they look for in a partner, and where the money goes once a deal closes.

Hear Crystal Smith, Chief Councillor of the Haisla Nation from 2017 to 2025, on the barriers to Cedar LNG...

Canada's marginal effective tax rate on new business investment has fallen to 6.4% under the Productivity Mega Deduction. Finance Canada puts the equivalent United States rate at 16.9% and the United Kingdom at 30.2%.

Prime Minister Carney announced the measure to over 100 of the world's largest investors at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, which produced nearly C$500 billion in new investment commitments against a C$1 trillion five year ambition. Alongside it came private investment opening across Toronto Pearson, Montréal-Trudeau, Vancouver and Calgary airports, and a commitment to complete all regulatory reviews for major projects within one year.

Canada's trillion dollar investment agenda now has the prime minister's own words behind it. Opening the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto this week, Mark Carney told the room it is time to build big projects that transform and connect the economy, and that shared leadership with Indigenous peoples sits at the centre of that mission.

More than 160 projects are on the table, but only 15 are described in the summit's own prospectus as shovel ready or fully permitted, among them the US$28.5 billion Ksi Lisims floating LNG terminal in northern British Columbia. Every one of those 160 projects crosses...

Canada's $1 Trillion Investment Agenda Runs Through Indigenous Land. As the Canada Investment Summit opens in Toronto next week, this special episode of Drumbeats explains why.

The Rt Hon Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, has called shared leadership with Indigenous peoples central to building the major projects now targeted for investment. No pipeline, mine, port or energy project can proceed without the consent and partnership of the Indigenous communities whose territories they cross, a requirement mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada without exception.

This episode brings together voices recorded at the Canadian Indigenous Investment...

Economic growth, investment certainty and Indigenous rights sit on one pathway, not three competing priorities to weigh against each other. In the second of two conversations, Kluane Adamek, Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council to Canada's Major Projects Office, sets out why.

Adamek also sets out what she would say to an asset manager in London, a pension fund in the Netherlands, or a corporate development team in Frankfurt approaching Canada for the first time. Community wellbeing and prosperity go together, and moving beyond consultation is where a durable partnership gets built.

Indigenous nations, in...

Federal timelines, community readiness and investor certainty sit on one pathway, not three competing clocks. In the first of two conversations, Kluane Adamek, Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council to Canada's Major Projects Office, sets out why.

A recent piece of federal legislation shows what that pathway looks like in practice. Adamek recounts the Council pushing to extend a proposed one-month engagement period, an intervention with a direct bearing on how much trust a process can build before a decision is made.

For a project finance banker in London, an infrastructure fund manager in Amsterdam...

Thirty First Nations along a transmission line. Kwatuuma Cole Sayers, co-founder and executive director of the Indigenous Power Coalition, explains how coordinated collective ownership de-risks major infrastructure.

Canada is entering one of the largest electricity infrastructure build-outs in its history. Major transmission projects cross dozens of First Nations territories. Historically, projects stall because sponsors negotiate with ten, twenty, thirty separate Indigenous counterparties instead of one aligned owner.

Kwatuuma convenes First Nations as collective owners in major transmission infrastructure, moving them from passive participants to project proponents on their own terms.

This changes the...

Arctic infrastructure: $32B in defence spending meets Indigenous-led road to Canada's first deep-water port. Two CEOs from the Northwest Territories.

Canada's Arctic is entering a multi-decade infrastructure cycle.

The federal government has committed $32 billion in defence spending across the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Labrador, while the proposed Arctic Economic Security Corridor would build the first all-season road from Yellowknife towards the Arctic coast, connecting to the Grays Bay Road and Port Project to establish Canada's first deep-water port on the Northwest Passage.

Paul Gruner, CEO of the Tłı̨chǫ Investment Corporation, and Mark Lewi...

BMO's $200M indigenous bond was materially oversubscribed. A $10B federal loan guarantee is reshaping Canada's project capital stack. Two architects explain.

BMO Capital Markets issued the first labelled indigenous bond by a North American bank, a CAD $200 million instrument that was materially oversubscribed and has since won Environmental Finance's Social Bond of the Year. In this episode, John Uhren, Global Head of Sustainable Finance at BMO, explains the investor demand and what it means for future issuance.

Jolain Foster, Managing Partner of Nation Building at Deloitte Canada, describes how her practice prepares Indigenous nations to...

C$4B+ in Indigenous debentures issued. C$10B in federal loan guarantees deployed. Two CEOs explain the capital architecture behind it.

Canada's Indigenous capital markets infrastructure has reached a scale that institutional investors can no longer overlook. In this episode, recorded at the City of London during the third Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit, Ernie Daniels, President and CEO of the @firstnationsfinanceauthority and Kristan Straub, President and CEO of the Canada Indigenous Loan Guarantee Corporation (CILGC), explain the mechanics of two institutions now operating at billions of dollars of deployment.

The FNFA has issued more than...

The City of London manages approximately 13% of global assets under management, representing an estimated 25 to 30% of internationally movable capital.

When Sean Willy, President and CEO of the Des Nedhe Group, sat down with Professor Michael Mainelli, founder of Z/Yen (the City's leading commercial think tank) and Emeritus Gresham Professor of Commerce, at the London Stock Exchange during the Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit, the conversation turned to a question institutional investors rarely ask: why do Indigenous-partnered projects consistently outperform?

Sean Willy leads English River First Nation's economic development corporation, which has grown from a single...

C$280bn fund building Indigenous relationships in Canada. OTPP's Robert Sturgeon and Suncor director JP Gladu on deal flow and a half-trillion pipeline.

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan manages nearly C$280 billion on behalf of 350,000 members and deploys roughly 30% in Canada. Senior Managing Director Robert Sturgeon tells Drumbeats about how the fund is prioritising building Indigenous relationships and better understanding the ecosystem, opportunities and challenges, as well as the interest they are seeing for investment in Canada.

JP Gladu, Principal of Mokwateh and a Suncor Energy board director, sits on the Prime...

Indigenous capital markets, institutional deal flow, and a 2-to-200 listed company gap: TMX Group CEO John McKenzie and CIBC's Lisa Raitt.

John McKenzie, CEO of TMX Group, and the Hon. Lisa Raitt, Vice Chair at CIBC Capital Markets, sit down with Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant during the Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit 2026.

McKenzie quantifies the scale of the opportunity: two Indigenous-led companies are currently listed on Canadian exchanges, against a proportional target of 150 to 200.

Raitt argues that the deals Indigenous communities are presenting to institutional investors are resource, energy, and infrastructure transactions evaluated...

Over nine thousand five hundred Canadian schools, all five major Canadian banks, and over one hundred major corporates have signed up to the work of the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund, the charity that grew out of a terminally ill rock star's call to his country in August 2016 to do something about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

Sarah Midanik, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Fund and a board director at the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business, joins Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant to set out what this cultural shift means for international...

Jordan Baptiste, Partner and President of Creative Fire, joins Drumbeats to discuss how a 25-year-old Nation-owned Indigenous advisory, engagement and creative agency is supporting major companies including Agnico Eagle, Ontario Power Generation and Denison Mines.

Creative Fire is a Nation-owned Indigenous advisory, strategy, and creative consultancy, owned by English River First Nation through Des Nedhe Group. The professional services firm supports some of Canada's largest resource companies with Indigenous engagement, communications, reporting, and reconciliation efforts, while returning profits back to the Nation and making a grassroots impact across the country.

Jordan outlines how that ownership...

Shannin Metatawabin, CEO of NACCA, on 55,000 Indigenous business loans at a 97% repayment rate and the fund that pays investors first.

The National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association is Canada's national body for more than 50 Indigenous financial institutions.

Over 35 years, the network has made 55,000 loans to Indigenous entrepreneurs and small businesses, with a 97% repayment rate that Shannin notes outperforms the commercial banks.

Annual lending has risen 60% since 2024.

The Indigenous Growth Fund, NACCA's institutional vehicle, closed its first round at C$153M with the Government of...

For institutional investors weighing Canadian energy and infrastructure exposure, the framing of Indigenous engagement has fundamentally shifted. The new question isn't whether First Nations will support projects. It's whether they will lead them.

In this episode of Drumbeats, hosts Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant speak with Dale Swampy, President of the National Coalition of Chiefs, a body representing eighty-one First Nations chiefs across Canada with a mandate to defeat on-reserve poverty through major resource development.

Dale brings two decades of front-line pipeline consultation experience, including his role leading the Aboriginal Equity Partners process for the...

Indigenous equity. Enbridge. 200MW wind. Six First Nations. 30% equity stake. Institutional-scale Indigenous partnership in Canada.

Jake Sinclair is CEO of Cowessess Ventures Ltd and President of Six Nations Energy Development LP, the consortium that negotiated a minimum thirty per cent equity stake in the Seven Stars Wind Project, a two hundred megawatt Enbridge development backed by up to one hundred million Canadian dollars in SIIFC loan guarantees and targeted for operation in 2027.

The Seven Stars project is the anchor, but Cowessess Ventures runs a diversified portfolio: a separate two hundred megawatt wind project, a ten...

Bill Lomax, CEO of First Nations Bank of Canada, on growing a Schedule I Indigenous-owned bank to $5.4B AUM with a near-zero default record.

Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant sit down with Bill at the TMX Market Centre in Toronto during the FNMPC annual conference.

Founded in 1996 with TD Bank as regulatory sponsor and now approximately 91% Indigenous-owned, First Nations Bank of Canada marks its 30th year in 2026. Under Bill's leadership the trust business has grown from roughly $800 million to $1.4 billion in assets under management, and the bank's current equity raise has already exceeded its $50 million...

Aviva Investors' Head of Infrastructure Debt, Darryl Murphy, brings nearly three decades of European institutional capital experience to a frank assessment of Canada's Indigenous infrastructure investment market. In a conversation recorded shortly after the Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit 2026 at the London Stock Exchange, Darryl explains why he believes capital is not the constraint on this opportunity set, and what the European debt market needs to see before deploying at scale.

In this episode, recorded with hosts Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant, Darryl covers:

OMERS President and Chief Executive Officer Blake Hutcheson on Canadian capital deployment, Indigenous equity structures, and the pricing case for major project debt.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the First Nations Major Projects Coalition's annual event in late April.

Blake Hutcheson, President and Chief Executive Officer of OMERS, has put a clear number on the page for international investors. At least $10 billion of additional Canadian deployment over the next five years, with a stated intention to lift Canada's share of the portfolio meaningfully above its current 20%. OMERS is one of Canada's Maple 8...

For forty years, Kitsaki Management Limited Partnership built one of Canada's largest Indigenous enterprise groups without external debt or outside equity.

Kitsaki now operates 12 companies and 21 subsidiaries, employs over 2,000 people, and has distributed $47 million back to the 12,900 members of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. In this episode of Drumbeats, hosts Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant speak with CEO Ron Hyggen about how Kitsaki reached this scale across Saskatchewan's uranium and potash sectors, and why it is now opening to external capital for the first time in its history.

You'll learn:

Adam Matthews is the Chief Responsible Investment Officer at the Church of England Pensions Board. He plays a key role in how major institutional investors assess mining companies and evaluate Canada’s Indigenous equity partnership model as part of how they allocate capital.

He also chairs the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, a coalition of 125 institutional investors managing about $19 trillion in assets, working to define how responsible investment in mining is properly applied and to translate those standards into investment practice.

In this episode of Drumbeats, Adam Matthews explains how institutional investors are building and ap...

The Port of Churchill is operational. Canada's only deepwater Arctic seaport, owned entirely by 29 First Nations and 12 northern Manitoba communities, has shipped critical minerals to European markets for two consecutive shipping seasons.

Chris Avery, President and CEO of the Arctic Gateway Group, joins Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant on Drumbeats to set out the commercial case for European institutional capital.

In this episode:

Nearly two hundred investors, lenders, and project principals gathered at the London Stock Exchange for the third annual Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit — and nobody left the sessions. One of Canada's Maple Eight pension funds noted that the corridors were empty all day: a small detail, and a precise one.

In this post-summit debrief, Drumbeats hosts Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant go through what the room revealed — the conversations that moved furthest and the intelligence that matters for institutional capital with an interest in Canada.

On energy: A major LNG project in northwest British Columbia is appr...

In 2025, the Bank of Montreal elevated its Indigenous banking operation from a specialist unit into a dedicated enterprise-wide function - the BMO Office of Reconciliation. The decision came after more than three decades of building what is now Canada's most established Indigenous financial services programme, and it signals something important: Indigenous participation in Canadian capital markets is no longer a niche consideration for institutional investors. It is the next structural phase of the market.

Dan Adams, Head of the BMO Office of Reconciliation, joined Drumbeats to explain how this translates into practice. Dan has spent his career...

The old investment rules are no longer enough to protect capital in this new market with greater macro volatility.

With the oil crisis ongoing, the global economy continues to face rising pressure and uncertainty. Crude prices have soared up to $112 per barrel. European gas surged more than 70% in March and TTF, the European gas benchmark, traded at €54 per megawatt-hour.

Even gold and government bonds, which investors usually trust in tough times, are no longer providing the stability they once did.

Where can investors safely put their money?

In this pre-summit episode of...

In April 2025, the Premiers of Manitoba and Nunavut signed a joint declaration to create a strategic energy and economic corridor between the two jurisdictions. Manitoba repatriated expiring hydro export contracts to the US and carved out 50 megawatts specifically for the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link. As Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, CEO of Nukik Corporation, explains in this episode: until that moment, the project had a concept but no product to flow through the transmission line. That declaration changed everything.

In Part 2 of this two-episode conversation, Anne-Raphaëlle takes Mark Magnacca and Rob Brant inside the project itself - its full sp...

Nunavut is 20% of Canada's landmass. It has no roads, no transmission lines and no physical connection to the rest of the nation. Every watt of electricity powering its homes, hospitals, schools and two major gold mines runs on diesel and almost all of that diesel is imported from foreign countries. Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, CEO of Nukik Corporation, is working to change that.

In this episode of Drumbeats, Anne-Raphaëlle explains the scope of the challenge, the commercial architecture of the solution, and why she believes Canada's Arctic represents one of the most compelling regulated infrastructure opportunities available to...

For institutional investors, infrastructure fund managers, and senior advisors evaluating Canadian project opportunities, the question is no longer whether Indigenous equity participation matters - it is how the financing actually works, and what the federal government is doing to accelerate it. This episode answers both questions directly.

In Part 2 of our conversation with Jonathan Davey, Managing Director of Indigenous and Government Advisory at Scotiabank's Global Banking and Markets division, we move from the biographical to the operational. Jonathan is Haudenosaunee and a member of the Lower Cayuga Nation of the Six Nations of the Grand River. He...

For senior investment bankers, infrastructure fund managers, and institutional investors building a picture of Canada's Indigenous economy, understanding who is driving change inside the country's major financial institutions matters as much as understanding policy. This episode gives you direct access to one of those people.

Jonathan Davey is Managing Director of Indigenous and Government Advisory at Scotiabank's Global Banking and Markets division- the first role of its kind at a major Canadian bank. Haudenosaunee and a member of the Lower Cayuga Nation of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Jonathan spent a decade practising Indigenous law...

Canada has a housing crisis in its Indigenous communities that has run for fifty years. The federal government's social housing programme - capped at $150 million annually - produces fewer than one home per community per year across 630 First Nations. The major banks, operating on policies written in the 1960s, have largely refused to lend on-reserve. And yet the infrastructure, the legal frameworks, and the investor appetite to solve this problem exist today.

Tracee Smith, President and CEO of Keewaywin Capital Inc., is the private credit fund manager who is stepping into that gap and building a compelling...

Canada Indigenous business growth, oil sands investment opportunities, and Truth and Reconciliation economic impact explained by Nicole Bourque, CEO of Bouchier Group.

UK and European investors gain insight into how a $200M Indigenous-owned industrial company is scaling, winning ExxonMobil recognition, and building institutional-grade growth platforms.

Part 2 explores how Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission became an unexpected catalyst for Indigenous business competitiveness, unlocking new commercial pathways for Indigenous-owned companies operating at scale. In this continuation of our conversation, Nicole discusses Bouchier's transformation:

• Nicole explains how Bouchier Group integrated Indigenous identity with operational excellence.

In this first part of our conversation, Nicole Bourque-Bouchier walks through a story that starts with checking her company's first year-end financials on her honeymoon. After the hardest working year of her life, she scrolled to the bottom line: minus $250,000.

That was 2005. Bouchier just closed 2025 at $200 million.

Nicole is CEO of Bouchier, one of Canada's largest privately-owned Indigenous companies in Alberta's oil sands. She's Mikisew Cree, raised on the trapline before her father took a Syncrude job and moved the family to Fort McMurray. She worked through Syncrude, ran her own consulting business, then joined...

This episode breaks down Indigenous investment, global capital markets, outcomes financing and where the next wave of Indigenous-led impact is heading.

🎧 Jeff Cyr: Founder & Managing Partner, Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds; CEO, Raven Indigenous Impact Foundation, returns to explain how outcomes-based financing is scaling across Canada and capturing international investment attention.

In Part Two, Jeff goes deeper into how Raven’s model differs from other outcomes funds in the UK, US and Australia—centering community decision-making, prioritizing Indigenous leadership on every project, and designing investments that deliver both measurable societal benefit and fair investor returns.

You’l...

OUTCOMES FINANCE | INDIGENOUS INVESTMENT | COMMUNITY CAPITAL This episode breaks down how Indigenous communities are accelerating infrastructure, financing clean energy, and reshaping the investment landscape through outcomes-based financing.

Guest: Jeffrey Cyr, Founder & Managing Partner, Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds.

How do Indigenous Nations deploy housing, energy, and infrastructure faster while delivering investor returns and community impact? Jeffrey Cyr, Founder and Managing Partner of Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds, breaks down how outcomes-based financing moves projects out of government bottlenecks, channels capital directly into communities, creates measurable public savings, and repays investors from those savings with verified returns.