On Nov. 13, at the Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase (IPSS) 2025 in Vancouver, a panel on “Indigenous Equity, Partnerships in Major Projects” turned a buzzword into something more concrete, walking through how equity deals actually get structured and sustained.
framed as “a short and spicy panel on indigenous equity and major projects,” the session focused less on headline ownership percentages and more on the governance, financing, and capacity that make those percentages real. Emily Black, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Enbridge, Sharon Singh, a partner at McMillan LLP, and Benjamin Cooper-Janvier, a senior advisor with MNP, drew on recent transactions across the country to map what is working, and where the hard work still lies.
“I think today we want to move a bit beyond that conversation and dive a bit deeper into these deals and the frameworks that are evolving to support them,” said moderator Allie Meeres in the opening remarks.
Every deal is different
Black began by stressing how little is “cookie cutter” about Indigenous equity.
“This is a very active part of [our] portfolio,” she said, noting that Enbridge has now completed Indigenous equity transactions on both mature assets and projects under development. “So we have done two transactions that are on existing assets, and then the one you referenced in Saskatchewan is on a development project.”
Emily Black of Enbridge.
Those differences are not cosmetic. Regulated and non-regulated assets throw up very different constraints. “Our transaction in Alberta was actually on a non rate regular related business,” Black explained. That changes how much cash the business can throw off and how growth is incorporated into the deal. In British Columbia, she added, Enbridge’s transaction was on “the existing asset that has been operating in BC for over 70 years,” with further expansions needing to be built into the structure.
Even basic governance can diverge by jurisdiction. When the Nations’ legal teams compared partnership law in Alberta and British Columbia, “they took a very different view of it,” Black said, so governance had to be “structured much different than in those two transactions.”
The lesson, for her, is to combine discipline with flexibility. “Every transaction ends up being very different, and you kind of have to roll with it,” she said. “As anyone in the room knows, I love structure, I love a process. So it was a good lesson for me, you start with a framework… and then from there, you kind of have to roll with what pops up along the way.”
That complexity multiplies when multiple communities are involved. In one recent transaction, “we had 38 nations, and we had a range of capacities,” Black said. Some had deep experience from previous projects, including in energy and mining, and “worked with the communities that did not have that experience.” That peer-to-peer support mattered because “it takes time to build trust, even with the nation’s advisors… they are their advisors, they have hired them, they are working for them, but they are still strangers when they start out with the process.”
Governance is the hardest work
Singh, who frequently advises Nations and consortiums on these transactions, framed governance as the main challenge on the Indigenous side of the table.
Sharon Singh of McMillan LLP.
“Depending on which hat I am wearing, I would say different risks and different challenges,” she said. I am advising the nations… the biggest challenge I find is on the governance front.”
She described the work of consolidating a governance model that “fits within both the Canadian Aboriginal law, as well as Canadian commercial law, with the Indigenous governance and protocols that the nations want to have in place.” That, she said, “is a real challenge, and it requires a significant amount of time and dedication,” both in legal terms and in the practical work of alignment and consultation inside and among communities.
On the technical side, Singh argued that the law is becoming more manageable. She pointed to emerging tools such as provincial moves to allow Nations onto land registries and evolving rules around partnerships and tax incentives. “All those components come into it that continue to present challenges,” she said, “but they are mitigated with solid technical advice.”
Crucially, that advice has to come from a team, not a single guru. “They can be mitigated by just having the right advisors,” she said. “And it is not one advisor, it is going to be a series of advisors, because these things are still novel. They are not, you know, there is no one expert that has done them all. So anybody that claims to be an expert in them, I think, is just, it is not quite accurate.”
Capital, guarantees and community choice
Cooper-Janvier, who works with Nations on business acquisitions and operations as well as major projects, focused on how communities actually finance their share. For many, he said, the same investment committees look at equity in a pipeline, a plant, or a local operating company. “Nations do not necessarily look at investments in major projects and business acquisitions differently,” he noted. “The opportunities come across their desk throughout the week.”
He highlighted a recent program between First Nations Bank and BDC that supports operating companies. “It is not a huge amount of money, but it is helpful,” he said, describing a total pool of “100 million dollars” and individual advances of “up to 5 million” per deal, while adding, “I would need to double check those figures exactly.”
Benjamin Cooper-Janvier on the IPSS stage.
More broadly, Cooper-Janvier pushed back on the idea that capital is never available. “Access to capital, if the deal is commercially feasible, if it is going to make money, you know, banks will lend on that transaction,” he said. “Banks were very happy to provide money on commercially feasible opportunities.”
Where additional loan programs come in, he explained, is when communities lack cash for the final equity piece, or choose not to deploy it. In a simple example, a Nation buying a 100 million dollar interest might receive a standard loan for 75 million, secured against the asset’s contracted revenues, then use a second loan for the remaining 25 million that would normally be paid in cash. “So there is two loans,” he said, with one secured by the equity guarantee and the other by the asset itself. Those programs “are really to support the communities who either do not have the capital or prefer not to,” he added.
Taken together, the three speakers reinforced the same message. Equity in major projects is no longer a novelty, and has become a growing part of Indigenous economic strategy. But getting beyond the headline percentage requires frameworks that can flex from deal to deal, serious governance work among Nations and partners, and sustained investments in advice and capacity so communities can choose, on their own terms, which opportunities to pursue.
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