Reconciliation in Action: Indigenous Partnership and Ontario’s Ring of Fire with the Hon. Greg Rickford

As Ontario embarks on some of the largest infrastructure and mining investments in its history, one truth stands out: success depends on Indigenous partnership.

In this episode, we mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation by focusing on the critical role Indigenous communities play in shaping Ontario’s economic future.

Michael Fox, President of Indigenous Community Engagement, moderates a powerful discussion with Chief Cornelius Wabasse of the Webequie First Nation and The Honourable Greg Rickford, Ontario’s Minister of Indigenous Affairs. 

Then, Minister Rickford joins the Board's President and CEO, Giles Gherson for a sit-down conversation.

The conversations speak about:

• The road to developing the Ring of Fire responsibly
• Embedding Indigenous leadership from the start
• Training the next generation of Indigenous workers
• Access to capital and building sovereign wealth
• Turning policy into practice with real infrastructure investments

Transcript

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From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk about building growth through Indigenous partnerships. It's about not just critical minerals, critical infrastructure, but actually critical relations with the Indigenous communities. It is about the development of a region responsibly, and that is about community and economic partnerships. Make no mistake about it, if we don't get that right, mining cannot come after that. Ontario is making some of the largest infrastructure investments in its history. Billions are going into energy, transit, and resource projects. The real measure of success will be both what gets built and how. Embedding Indigenous leadership and partnership from the beginning creates projects that are stronger, more resilient, and more competitive. As the country marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we're reminded that reconciliation isn't separate from growth. It's central to it. That was the focus of our recent event, where Michael Fox, President of Indigenous Community Engagement, sat down with the Honourable Greg Rickford, Ontario's Minister of Indigenous Affairs, and Chief Cornelius Wabas of the Wabaqui First Nation. With the theme of the Ring of Fire, I think those of us that are in the loop in the Ring of Fire, I guess, understand that it's about not just critical minerals, critical infrastructure, but actually critical relations with the Indigenous communities. And there are folks in this room that understand that. They know that if you're going to build mines anywhere in the far north, particularly in the Webeque area, that you're not building mines. You have to build communities. I just wanted to mention that. So I have the privilege today to moderate the fireside chat with the two highly respected leaders here. Chief, you know, the Ring of Fire discovery was 18 years ago. People here, especially corporate Canada, really don't know WebEQA's aspirations as it relates to the Ring of Fire. And I think it'd be insightful if you can share with the audience here, what is WebEQA's vision for itself as it relates to the Ring of Fire? Thank you, Mike. I'm glad to be here today. You know, when I got in as a chief back in 2009, I, that's when the the Ring of Fire, you know, was, you know, an explosion. So everything was new to me at that time. And, you know, from there on, I started working on trying to get a picture of what is taking place. And then we found out that this is one of the things that will make vision come to reality you know with you know with the potential of mining in our community that that could you know help us with our vision because our vision is you know with the reservation that we have there we have to somehow find ways to to flourish you know on that reservation so from there we we we work together to make sure that you know that any development that happens in our area will you know prosper our community and have opportunities for our for our members as well so and our young generation so we are you know uh you know still looking forward to uh to making sure that this vision happens say you know for our community and our community stands with us on that so moving that we can continue to be a you know a partner in in any development that happens in the area and we are open for you know working together. You know Chief like in the Indigenous Nations elders are highly regarded and listened to. What has the elders in your communities, what have they said to you and how they guide you today? Yeah that's right. I mean our elders are very important you know for our communities and they have a lot of knowledge and a lot of advice that they give us as leaders for our community. My elder, he's passed away now, but I still, you know, hold on to his advice to me, saying that, you know, that we have to continue working with industry, with government. We have to be open, you know, to be able to make things happen to our community. Thank you. Our last question to you, Minister. What has the Premier said about the partner First Nations in the ring of fire? Well, look, I got an extraordinary opportunity in the wake of the last election to talk to the Premier about what this project really was. To the Chief's point, this is not just about building an opportunity to access an exquisite, qualitatively and quantitatively mining site, or sites, plural. It is about the development of a region responsibly, and that is about community and economic partnerships. Make no mistake about it, if we don't get that right, mining cannot come after that. And I would just close, Michael, by saying, I mentioned the bridge into Pekanjicum and the communities beyond. A bridge costs 35 to $50 million to build in an isolated part of Northern Ontario. And the only workforce that we have available there, frankly, are members of those First Nations communities most proximal to the project. So building capacity and training, as you alluded to in your opening remarks before we set to this panel, are other areas that the Premier has, under his leadership, has envisioned and put skin in the game by announcing the kinds of resources we believe that will fuel and inspire young people to get into Red Seal training, heavy machinery operation, but also in the other fund to be involved in capacity of building legacy infrastructure, designing it, and to participate in the development of resource activities like mining. And those are the three tranches of funding that were announced in the wake of our last election and in pre-positioning through a budget what we're committed to in the years going forward. Thank you. That's at the stage for a one-on-one sit-down between Minister Rickford and our President and CEO Giles Gerson. The focus of their conversation was about turning policy into practice. Your role, as you say, in terms of economic reconciliation, kind of brings that together. So to me, these plans are very much part of what you're trying to do. Well, and it's about building out the policy options or the tools, if you will, to ensure that there's an ability for First Nations and or their economic entities to participate in those activities, to own, you know, road companies. Look, I live in Northwestern Ontario. We're twinning the highway out there and the lead company now with the partnership of another construction company has put four First Nations communities economic entity in a position where they're actually leading the construction of the road. Right? So that's very powerful. It's not just about the fact that the workforce is overwhelmingly First Nations. No, it's the management of these companies. They're now a road construction company. So the Indigenous Opportunities Fund, aptly named, deals with one of a couple of key structural challenges or barriers for First Nations communities and their economic businesses to proceed, and that's access to capital. Alberta got it right. Jason Kenney is the premier then. Full credit to him saw that a billion dollars could not only just put communities in a position and or their businesses, First Nations businesses to participate, but that it would also attract private sector investment because there was a confidence there. If the government's in, we should, and we could be too. And so now we're talking about sovereign wealth funds. I spoke to a first nations lawyer, Dave Brandt, a good friend of mine who said, those tools can be developed now that you guys have announced this $3 billion fund. You've announced the fund. We we've announced the fund and, and that is going to be a game changer in my view. Because of, because of just provides us so much confidence now, right? the project can move forward, the participation can take place. Well, I call it investor confidence and community partner, uh, um, trust. Right. And trust is critical. You don't get these agreements without- It's so fundamental to it, right? That they, they trust that their partners will do a couple things. One, work in good faith with them to build capacity. And there are some very sophisticated First Nations businesses and communities, particularly in Western Canada. and there are some here in Ontario, we'd like to see more. We'd like this to evolve into business, indigenous business conferences. I'm going to tap your board of trade to start to take a look at those kinds of forums because in Saskatchewan, 1200 people show up. Well, minister, I, you know, I lived in Alberta for a number of years. Right. That's right. And at the time, you know, there was a lot of, of, of support for what took place around the Syncrude oil sands project around Fort McMurray, where there was a really significant effort on the part of Syncrude to develop First Nations indigenous businesses on the supply chain and the service side. And this went on for 20 odd years. And it was always striking to me that Ontario didn't do that. Now, we're doing it, but we're behind what we saw in Alberta. But it was just striking to me that the model was kind of laid out and was very successful. And now we're seeing it here. And maybe it's that Alberta had significant resource development in the '70s, '80s, and'90s. Ontario, now we're seeing this massive resurgence in mining. We had a few decades where it was fairly low rate. Some of that's cyclical. It deals with the commodity markets themselves and it's global. But they need the projects. And now we've got the projects, whether it's energy projects, whether it's critical minerals Now we're starting to see the activity. Hence, the work you're doing really falls into place, I think, very, very nicely and sets the table for the future in a different way than we have in the past. I wanted to talk to you a bit about Ring of Fire because you mentioned some of the early projects that you were involved in with this government when this government came to office in 2018, partly because you cleared away some of the red tape that had been holding up these projects. And then you were able to get them going. And as you said, they're now producing projects and they're in participation with First Nations communities. Partnerships, business partnerships, not impact benefit agreements and those sketchy kind of things. Think of impact benefit, like it's a double negative. They come together. Yeah, this is going to have an impact, we're going to give you some kind of benefit from the impact. But the big enchilada, when you think about mining projects in Ontario is Ring of Fire. You and I were just talking before this podcast about how long it goes back. I mean, I was in cabinet office in the provincial government, the previous provincial government, when Premier McGinty first really announced, we're going to get moving on the ring of fire. And at the time, it was viewed as almost the creation of a new Sudbury. The resources were so vast and the opportunity was so great. There was also an opportunity to create a new Sudbury, but with full indigenous participation. This would be a different model for development in the North. But here we are, like I'm going to say 15 years later or more, and now you made an announcement just recently. You've announced a rehabilitation project for Geraldton's Main Street, leading from the Trans-Canada Highway in and through Geraldton, so a major access road, and that's going to set the table, use that word again, phrase again, for the Ring of Fire development. But just talk a little bit about that. a $61 million investment, which is not insignificant. Let's talk a little bit about what that does. Well, the precursor to that, of course, was some activity that we had, the Premier and I had been in the area for, and that was to announce resources to work with the surrounding First Nations communities because Greenstone Municipality has several First Nations. Most of our listeners probably won't know where it is. Okay, so Geraldton lies on part of the transition Canada Highway it's about two and a half hours east and north of Thunder Bay. It is Ontario's second largest municipality by land and its lowest populated. So some real challenges, a low tax base, scattered communities, Nikina and the likes, and a real intractable problem of using a tax base to build out major projects and so you know we recognized when with the premier uh that that that that geraldton itself or greenstone as they call it in in in modern times needed a lot of work to be able to serve as the baseline and you talked about it being a sudbury i i that's probably the wrong word but no no no it's it what sudbury is sudbury is a mining center of gravity okay for Ontario and we believe this is the next center of ground so maybe that's a good way of putting okay yeah and and it will look and feel entirely different than Sudbury and a lot of that has to do with its proximity to Toronto yada yada but importantly um this is a corridor of four to 500 kilometers in length and we have no baseline capacity off of a major trans-canada route to serve that corridor so together with first nations communities we built we're building the mcgizie plaza with them taking the lead on the business uh side of it the community of geraldton that's going to be off the main it's right there if you turn off of highway 17 boom there's a big plaza it's going to be gasoline and there's going to be confectionary and restaurant ability um and staging of equipment staging of equipment it's a fairly large uh area so that companies coming up up there to do the work can, can, can, uh, have a space to, to, to set the stage for that. But that first five kilometers, we're talking about roadway water treatment capacity just to get through to Geraldton. And then of course, once that's finished, you've got the enhancements, which we've already started actually after Geraldton or Greenstone in up to Arrowland First Nations. We're talking a stretch of about 50 kilometers. And then there's another stretch of 20 or 30 kilometers of gravel surface road that, well, that's likely what the surface will look like for the corridor. It's not big enough to handle the kind of commercial, industrial, and personal travel that we envision. Giles, I would just finish on this point with this. Previous companies that have owned the rights to the ring of fire. Well, you had cliffs. Cliffs. They looked at, you know, can we do a P3? but they were not crazy about the idea of that corridor being used for anything else except for the activities into the ring of fire. That singular view shut that project down. And it was exacerbated by a previous government that was bent on bureaucratic processes and layers and layers of environmental assessments. At the time, I was the Minister of Natural Resources and I was federally and responsible for economic development federally in Northern Ontario. And you could just see it. You're like, oh my God, we're talking about, talking about, talking about something to talk about here. So today's announcement puts shovels in the ground. I mean, your listeners really need to understand it is real legacy infrastructure that will serve that region. And a number of important policy options. One of which is to develop access to the ring of fire and start mining activity. Well, I think it's important because, you know, once you've got a real live project, you know, in place, now you've got something real. Yeah, you've actually got a starting point. It's not just talk anymore. Once you've got this, what do you think that, what are we talking about in terms of time frame for that five kilometer stretch? This is a shovel ready project that will commence within the next, probably there's an indigenous partnership component that the municipality has. They're putting that together right now and speaking with the chief administrative officer and their outstanding mayor, Jamie McPherson, we envision construction to begin in the coming month. So then winter starts. Winters are long. Construction season's shorter. Can you do it by next? How long? Well, the environmental assessments for segments of the road beyond that first five kilometers are coming off at the end of this calendar year. So as I like to say, this is coming to a theater near you. And we want to be, our idea and how we envision this is that as each construction project and as each environmental assessment is completed and signed off, we're ready to move into construction on the next segment, right? So we already started on some basic upgrades in and around and up to Arrowland First Nations, culverts, creating capacity for that pavement surface road to carry and bear some of the projects that Arrowland First Nations is working on through our shared partnership agreement. We announced just before the election back in January, funding has flowed there. There's a few communities farther north, like Yabmatung, Fort Hope, as some folks would know it, where agreements are imminent, Giles. And these are all signaling our full intention to work on legacy infrastructure to support what those communities need and want, and our interest to develop the Ring of Fire responsibly for, obviously, for the resources and the good public policy of ensuring that those particular First Nations communities have the kinds of things that First Nations communities and municipalities in that area have come to experience in a far greater quality, and folks down here take for granted. Absolutely. But when you think about, so let's think about, moving how this will unfold, I guess one of the interesting questions will be, we talked a little about these indigenous participation plans and how you need to have capacity. You need workforce capacity, you need community capacity, and then the proponents, these project proponents, need to have the capacity to manage these projects appropriately. Do we have the workforce, And how are we going to get the workforce needed, indigenous workforce, to help move these projects forward? Invest in training. And it comes in a couple of forms very quickly. You know, I worked in the North when we reconciled as a federal minister, a number of First Nations men and women who had worked on major projects and had accumulated in a technical sense hours for Red Seal training, but never got the Red Seal training. Investing in a workforce, Giles, I'm here to tell you, other provincial sources of manpower or human resources simply isn't available. No, I know. We have to train up that First Nations workforce, and they are right there. Hello, we're here, right? Some of the higher unemployment rates are in those communities. young people are looking and asking way more aggressively than they have in the past for opportunities to pick up that phone and hear that they have a job a good paying job that they can raise a family in their community on projects that will be game changers for them and benefit the province of ontario and canada writ large so last question crystal ball for a second putting together the infrastructure you're talking about that you're just getting going on now which is is a major first step, putting together the training of the First Nations workforce that we need to have. We're already working on that, well underway. When do you think we might hear that the Ring of Fire is an operating mine in the Ring of Fire? We have timelines that we've been able to move back incredibly. Premier Ford loves to work from a date and work back, And then we identify where there are gaps and challenges, but, but actual opportunities. And I think that we have probably moved just by today's announcement and the work that we've been doing. I think we've already brought that yardstick back a couple of years. So if the yardstick was out there for, you know, like a 2032, I think we're back now, you know, in the twenties somewhere where Wailoo will look at, you know, at proceeding with actual, um, physical activities. on the mining site. The environmental assessments there are going to be made more streamlined in cooperation with the federal government. At least that's what we're hearing and we're hopeful for that because it's under an EA right now. Looks like it'll be one of the major projects. And we will be working effective this afternoon with the leadership of Webeque First Nations to ensure that they have the kind of local infrastructure that if Wailoo wants to get started on certain activities on the site of Eagle's Nest, they'll have the capacity by air to start some of those fundamental kinds of things. So I don't see any reason why in the next couple of years the people of Ontario and the people of Canada should expect that we will be proceeding with the construction of taking shape. Perfect. Minister, thank you very much. Great to have you on the podcast. It's great to be here. As we reflect on truth and reconciliation, it's clear Ontario's infrastructure future must be built with Indigenous partnership at its core. That's all for this episode of Toronto Talks. Make sure you share this episode on LinkedIn to keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening. Keep talking, Toronto. Our voice drives meaningful change.