Article content continued

Some of the oil and gas money helped Maskwacis bands buy farmland, but only a few businesses came out of it.

One issue was a legal reality that has always made it difficult for folks on reserves to get into business. While people off a reserve purchase and own their own homes, and can then leverage that investment to get a bank loan to start a business, on federal reserves the land is communally owned. That makes such loans impossible, as there’s nothing the bank can seize if the loan isn’t paid.

This lending dynamic is one reason that Indigenous business were only able to access 0.2 per cent of total available capital in 2013, Wilson says. One estimate is that if they could access capital like other Canadian businesses, their share would have been 10 per cent.

Wilson makes it clear his main motivation for the new Indigenous corporation is to help out and to be fair. “We should be partnering with them. It’s the resources coming from under the ground that they live on.”

The new corporation will be based on sound business practice, he asserts. The board and executive will be stocked with expert people from the resource sector. Projects will be carefully vetted and private lenders will have to be convinced of any project’s viability.

Of course, previous Alberta governments had tried and failed on all kinds of diversification schemes, from cellphones to waste management, but government has always had its greatest success backing oil and gas.

The new employment and wealth on First Nations will be huge, Wilson says. A reserve already strong in business, Fort McKay near Fort McMurray, has zero unemployment, but some reserves have as high as 90 per cent unemployment.

“It’s hard to have pride in yourself when you don’t have a job and you’re not able to provide for your family,” Wilson says. “So to be able to give employment to some of these communities, if you want to talk reconciliation, that is true reconciliation.