SANKEY: BC First Nations are eager to unlock Canada's economic potential

Canada has a serious entrepreneur problem, and too many leaders in government still won't say it out loud.

You’ve heard it time and time again. Governments claim to want innovation, growth, private investment, good jobs, and more domestic ownership — but when the rubber hits the road and it’s time to back the people who actually build companies, take risks, and sign the paycheques, the government imposes high costs, slow approvals, policy confusion, and a culture that treats ambition as a character flaw. 

Nowhere is this more accurate than in British Columbia.

The result is alarming. More of our job creators are building their businesses in other provinces or even other countries. 

The recent speech by the New Democratic Party leader Avi Lewis about the private sector is concerning. While I understand that, as a country, we can do a better job of helping the middle-to-lower-class populace, we still need to encourage entrepreneurship. 

You don’t condemn or attack those who wish to thrive in the private sector, all to fan the flame to gain votes. It’s wrong, and all it does is create further divide. Just because a Canadian wants to make a dollar more than they did the year before doesn’t make them a bad person. We need to encourage ambition, not take it away.

Avi Lewis’ strong stance against oil and gas will not help Canada. While I understand the need for energy diversification, making comments and speeches against the private sector just to attract votes will once again bring Canada backwards. We cannot afford this anymore, period.

I am an entrepreneur. I work hard to provide for my family and give back. I have done everything right. Nobody jumped out of their chair to help me, other than my business partners and associates. There are so many community-based businesses that we as a country have chased away. This isn’t helping Canada, and it is definitely not helping BC.

A 2025 Leaders Fund study of nearly 3,000 venture-backed startups founded by Canadians found that, since the Covid-19 pandemic, Canadian founders have increasingly started companies abroad. In 2024, nearly half of Canadian founders who raised more than US$1 million were based in the United States, and those founders raised nearly twice as much capital as their counterparts in Canada. That should set off alarm bells in every premier's office and every federal department that claims to care about productivity and innovation.

This isn't only a startup story. It's a national competitiveness story.

Statistics Canada data shows emigration hit a record in 2025, with prime working-age adults making up more than half of those leaving. Not every one of those people is an entrepreneur, but the number tells us something larger about the country we've built: too many productive people are looking at Canada and concluding the effort no longer matches the reward.

Even the Y Combinator controversy earlier this year made the point. The accelerator briefly removed Canada from its list of acceptable countries of incorporation before reversing course after backlash. This issue reflected a hard truth many founders already know: where you incorporate impacts where capital flows, how quickly companies scale, and whether investors take you seriously.

If Canada wants to keep entrepreneurs here, we need to stop treating business as something to be managed, contained, or, at its worst, apologized for. Businesses pay wages, fund public services, and give communities a chance to build wealth rather than dependence. Every leader in this country needs to start acting like this is an inarguable fact.

Which brings us to BC First Nations, and why they belong in this conversation.

Indigenous communities are part of the solution to the national economic crisis. While I will always encourage community-based businesses, we, as business owners, need to be part of the economic engine. We create jobs and help reduce reliance on social programs that hinder families from dreaming big. 

I am tired of framed, outdated, patronizing, and economically foolish rhetoric about how we are not involved in opportunities. I have never seen a better opportunity for Indigenous entrepreneurs across BC and the country, but our communities need to see that we are a solution that will help take the pressure off community-based businesses that can provide more jobs and encourage other aspiring Indigenous entrepreneurs to be a part of Canada and not apart from Canada’s economic engine.

First Nations businesses are increasing not just as participants in projects — they're equity owners, decision-makers, and long-term partners. Ownership changes everything: incentives, governance, and how benefits flow across generations. 

This should encourage and help Indigenous business owners get involved and build our community together through training, jobs, and other revenue-generating activities that support the local economy. Local jobs keep a good portion of the money in the community. This helps local businesses. 

This gives all entrepreneurs the opportunity to work and play where they wish. After all, we want a future for our children where they are free to dream. Whether it’s that house they wanted, a car they fancied, the exotic trip they dreamed about, nice clothes on their backs and investments for their future.  

Canada has begun to take steps in the right direction. The federal government has introduced a $10 billion Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program to support Indigenous equity ownership in major projects. Alberta moved earlier by creating the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, a loan-guarantee model that has already helped Indigenous communities access capital and take ownership stakes in major developments. British Columbia has proposed its own First Nations Equity Financing Program, with up to $1 billion in loan guarantees. These programs matter because they demonstrate what can happen when governments focus on enabling participation rather than creating barriers.

But British Columbia needs to go further. It needs a program that matches the scale, certainty, and execution we are seeing from the Alberta and the Canadian governments.

The opportunity is already visible. The Canada Energy Regulator reported in February that Indigenous communities have acquired ownership interests in more than 5,000 kilometres of operating pipelines since 2021 and are involved in LNG facilities, including Cedar LNG, as well as in proposed export projects. 

The regulator's conclusion is straightforward: Indigenous ownership creates economic opportunity, strengthens participation in governance, and gives communities a real voice in infrastructure decisions affecting their territories.

Serious business leaders should be paying attention to this.

If you're an entrepreneur, investor, or builder in Canada, BC First Nations are among the most important economic partners in this country. 

I will always encourage treaties over reconciliation agreements. Why? Because Canada agreed to settle treaties over a century ago and we are still waiting. This will give Canada, BC and our communities much-needed certainty. 

By settling treaties, our communities bring land certainty, local knowledge, labour, legitimacy, and a growing appetite for ownership, and something Canada desperately needs more of right now: a practical understanding that prosperity doesn't come from press releases and photo ops. It comes from building projects, getting people to work, and keeping more value at home.

This is also what economic reconciliation actually looks like in practice; not performative consultation, not an endless process, not fly-in promises from governments that can't deliver. Real reconciliation means First Nations having the capital and authority to say yes to projects, to own meaningful shares of them, and to turn resource and infrastructure development into lasting community wealth.

Governments have turned reconciliation into an industry where a small percentage of consultants and lawyers reap the rewards while the vast majority of people in our country — including Indigenous communities they claim to represent — see no benefit. When lawyers and consultants corner the market like this, it hinders real economic growth. Reconciliation was never meant to be used as a weapon, but rather a solution for prosperity for all of us.

Canada can't afford to keep driving away investment and the people who create jobs while ignoring one of the strongest growth partnerships available to us. We need better support: less suspicion of private enterprise, more respect for risk, faster provincial and federal decisions, more domestic capital, and a clear-eyed understanding that BC First Nations aren't standing outside the economy waiting to be consulted. They're ready to help lead it.

If we do not take advantage of the opportunities before us, it will take centuries before we see anything like the prosperity on the table.

Chris Sankey is a senior advisor to the energy, investment, and infrastructure sectors, known for bridging Indigenous communities, industry, and government through practical, values-driven partnerships. He is also president of Blackfish Enterprises Ltd., partner in Fort Capital Partners and Blackfish Industries, former co-chair of the Tsimshian leadership table on the North Coast, and former senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.