“In order to accelerate the pace of Indigenous economic development and participation, we need a change of direction, and a new trajectory.”
The National Indigenous Economic Development Board – 2019 Indigenous Economic Progress Report
There currently exists a serious economic gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Significantly increased access to capital for Indigenous-owned companies and projects is needed to help close this gap. We believe that non-governmental sources of capital must be accessed and mobilized to provide national-scale economic solutions to this national-scale challenge that has confronted Indigenous people in Canada since colonialization.
According to the 2020 Canadian Responsible Investment Trends Report, published by the Responsible Investment Association of Canada, the Canadian Investment Industry has $3.2 Trillion in Responsible Investing (“RI”) assets under management. RI investing represents 61.8% of Canada’s investment industry, up from 50.6% two years ago, and the most prominent RI strategy is increased environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) investment participation.
NorthernNations Capital Corp. provides the structure for national-scale Indigenous investment opportunities required to access large-scale institutional investments.
This subsidiary of NorthernNations Cooperative is preparing to launch its first $1.0 billion private placement of capital required to fund NorthernNations initial portfolio of business acquisitions, and investments in selected major projects. Target investors for this capital assembly include domestic and international institutional investors with mandates to increase their ESG investment footprint. These institutions believe that investing in Canada’s Indigenous people is the right thing to do.
For example, one investing theme of NNCC is to aggregate several Indigenous-led sustainable energy projects including wind, solar, geothermal and pumped storage projects, and to syndicate this sizable portfolio of projects to NNCC’s institutional investor pool. This approach spreads both the risk and rewards of multiple projects across multiple investor groups.
