Drumbeats - Canadian Indigenous Investment Podcast

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...

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 invest...

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 descr...

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 procee...

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 corporat...

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-mon...

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, project...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 Can...

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 relationshi...

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 c...

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...

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 De...

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...

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 representi...

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 hu...

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 y...

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...

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 in...

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...

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...

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 institutio...

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 wha...