Opinion: What is economic development, anyway?
By Yves Chenier
What is economic development, anyway? This is a question that some of you may have been wondering as you consider what kind of business goes on at your Band Office or, perhaps, how you can bring wealth and prosperity to your First Nation. While it may seem pie-in-the-sky or even unnecessary to some, economic development can have a deep impact in each and every one of your lives and is something you should all be aware of, at least to some degree.
To get us all at least in the same book, it is probably important to have a general understanding of what economic development is, why it is so important for our First Nations, and why it is imperative that we understand and can relate what each of the concepts means in our daily lives. To accomplish this, we ask the question in the title of this article, “What is economic development, anyway?” Now, depending on who you ask or what the discussion topic is on that specific day, you may or may not get a straight answer to the question and will most likely get many answers that all seem similar with slight variations. Just try a Google search and you will get somewhere in the area of 1 Billion links to websites that will answer your question.
In all of this information out there, we had hoped to find an example that defined economic development in terms that we could all understand. In the search, we found an article for the Vail Valley Partnership dated Mar. 21, 2016, where the President and CEO, Chris Romer, defined economic development as, “a process of targeted activities and programs that work to improve the economic well-being and quality of life of a community by building local wealth, diversifying the economy, creating and retaining jobs, and building the local tax base.”[i] Now this is simply one of the hundreds of variations of the definition of economic development, but this one makes a lot of sense when you try to put it into terms that we can all easily relate to.
Using this definition, you should be able to identify easily the activities or programs in your community that are intended to improve your quality of life and economic well-being by building local wealth. It could be local training opportunities in skilled trades that lead to employment at a local industrial complex or First Nation-owned company. It could also be the negotiations that your First Nation may be involved in to ensure that a mining company within your territory guarantees jobs or pays royalties to the First Nation so that it can provide programs and services.
By diversifying and adding to the local economy, more money is brought into the community and stays in the local economy. This could be the reason why the Chief and Council may have recently issued a land designation allocating reserve lands to a developer so that a hotel could be financed and built within the community. The people staying in the hotel would support the local tourism economy and provide additional customers for the local shops and vendors who previously only had access to the local consumers within the community.
There is quite possibly a grocery and department store on a First Nation that provides jobs and offers training opportunities so that management positions within the company are filled by First Nation members. They then in return spend their earnings at the local vendors and purchase services locally.
Lastly, the Chief and Council may have implemented a Community Improvement Levy in an effort to create a local tax base. The levy could be a fee that is collected from all households and businesses in the community so that there is a base of revenue to support the infrastructure, social, and education needs of the community in addition to other government funding sources.
Now, this is a very basic example, but it does show how economic development and our social well-being are so closely linked. Over the next 12 months, we will write about how economic development initiatives based on government revenue generation, infrastructure development, planning, governance, and natural resources can improve the quality of programs and services that are provided to us by our local governments and facilitate the creation of self-sufficient and sustainable First Nation economies that will provide the quality of life and security that we see in other economies.
We hope you enjoyed this introductory article and that you look forward to reading more about economic development in First Nations. If you would like to read more about economic development, you can visit the following websites or just do a web search:
Canadian Association of Native Development Officers
National Indigenous Economic Development Board
Indigenous Services Canada, Economic Development Success Stories
[i] Why is Economic Development Important, https://www.vailvalleypartnership.com/2016/03/why-is-economic-development-important/, accessed June 15, 2020.