Supporting entrepreneurs and their startups is crucial to address labour demands, economic development needs and disparities between Indigenous Peoples and the non-Indigenous in Canada’s North, say organizations working directly with Northerners.

Northern regions have some of Canada’s highest job vacancy rates, yet will see growing demands for skilled labour over the next two decades amid increasing global attention on the fast-changing Arctic.

The demand for skills, including postsecondary education, “foundational” and other skills, is projected to increase by 63 percent in Yukon, 62 percent in Nunavut and 55 percent in Northern Ontario between 2024 and 2045, according to research by Signal49 (previously the Conference Board of Canada).

“There will be a large demand in skills in healthcare and social services, education, business and trades,” Amanda Thompson (photo at right), lead research associate at Signal49, said during a Future Skills Centre webinar on skills development in Indigenous and Northern communities.

At the same time, she noted, Canada’s North faces challenges that include:

• aging populations and declining participation in labour market.
• increasing competition across sectors for labour, with a reliance on fly-in/fly out labour, especially in construction and resource development.
• lack of access to postsecondary education.
• a housing crisis.
• disparities between Indigenous Peoples and the non-Indigenous population in education and employment, education funding, homelessness, mental health and addiction crises.

If they’re able to, “Youth leave these regions to attain some sort of postsecondary education of their choice and often they don’t return,” Thompson said.

In the face of such challenges, Northern Indigenous entrepreneurs can be “catalysts of prosperity and drivers of social change” within their own communities, said Xina Cowan (photo at right), co-director of Whitehorse, Yukon-based EntrepreNorth.

The development of sustainable enterprises by entrepreneurs can create local economic opportunities “to help break through poverty and strengthen Northern ways of life,” she said.

“We really see entrepreneurs as these changemakers who can be bringing value to their communities, hiring locally and developing products and services that really respond to the local needs of Northerners.”

However, Indigenous entrepreneurs in particular encounter significant obstacles in trying to start and grow their businesses, said Cowan, whose mother and her family are from the Mohawk Six Nations.

Entrepreneurs living in remote communities in the North have challenges accessing infrastructure and affordable housing, and pay high shipping costs, she said.

They’re also confronted with limited educational offerings in the North and face additional constraints to accessing capital to grow their businesses.

Cowan said EntrepreNorth recognized that what was needed in the North were culturally relevant business education and wraparound supports that would allow entrepreneurs to launch and scale their businesses, without having to leave their communities and travel to southern Canada.

“We offer a lot of programs for early-stage and aspiring entrepreneurs, and through that programming we’re also building technology in the North,” she said.

For example, EntrepreNorth is building an app, called eNorth, that guides users through a circular, holistic approach to entrepreneurship allows entrepreneurs to develop their businesses from their own homes and communities.

Historically, Indigenous entrepreneurs have had challenges accessing traditional loans through banks, Cowan noted. “Banks have not been friendly to Indigenous Peoples.”

EntpreneNorth launched a $10-million fund, called the Sinew Impact Fund, to provide better access to capital for Indigenous entrepreneurs. The fund was named after the sinew – tough fibrous tissue – from mammals that Indigenous artists, hide tanners and hunters use to weave things together.

Northern entrepreneurs need business support, but also wraparound social supports

Darian Kovacs (photo at right), a professional marketer and founding partner of Fort Langley, B.C.-based Jelly Digital Marketing and PR Agency, partnered his company with the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business to work with Indigenous entrepreneurs and business owners to “amplify” and leverage their businesses and stories – including by having an online presence.

“There are still thousands of people left behind [amid rapid technological change] who have yet to put a website up,” said Kovas, a Red River Mtis.

His company is working to make sure that no one is left behind, and to ensure technology and access to that technology is available for all people.

Kovacs said that includes making sure every entrepreneur has an opportunity to learn how to build a website, launch and grow a business, amplify their story, and get the certifications needed to offer jobs in the marketplace.

Jelly Digital Marketing and PR Agency is working with federal Employment and Social Development Canada’s Indigenous Skills and Employment (ISET) offices.

There are 119 ISET offices across Canada, with a $300-million annual budget that supports about 50,000 learners every year, Kovacs said.

However, the ISET offices aren’t well known because they’re scattered across the country, he said. Also, they were all working in isolation and so didn’t know what initiatives the other offices were working on.

Kovacs invited them all to a meeting in Ottawa to start networking and sharing best practices. The Future Skills Centre supported the effort, with another meeting held last year.

That resulted in a report last year, done in collaboration with ISET offices and Polytechnics Canada, on ways to support Indigenous Peoples in Canadian postsecondary institutions, he said.

Another meeting, including all of Canada’s largest workforce and human resources associations and sector councils is scheduled this month to share all the organization’s biggest job needs for the coming year.

Kovacs’s company and partners also recently launched a new initiative called the Workforce Readiness Program. The program pairs up an entrepreneur and a student, training them side-by- side for six months.

“The entrepreneur gets an employee for six months, the employee gets a six-month work experience,” Kovacs said. “At the end of the six months, the business has grown and they can ideally hire that person fulltime afterward, and perhaps others in the local community.”

Cowan noted that the other crucial support that entrepreneurs need – especially in remote and isolated communities in the North – is wraparound social supports, including supports for wellbeing.

“You can work with somebody to develop their skills and confidence and network until the cows come home,” she said.

“But unless there’s access to that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow [working capital], it’s going to be really challenging for an entrepreneur to get beyond that year or two years.”

At the same time, it’s not enough just to provide the investment to Indigenous entrepreneurs, she said.

“We’ve had to acknowledge the trauma that a lot of Indigenous Peoples have associated with money,” she said. “There has to be a lot of relational care and other supports that come along with that investment,” so that people are able to feel good about the support and their personal and business growth.

It can be really isolating to be the only entrepreneur in your remote community of 300 people, Cowan said.

“At EntrepreNorth, it’s not just about the business development, it’s about the wellbeing of the entrepreneur [that’s important],” she said.

Ways to close skills gaps, design and fund skills training and invest in Indigenous workforce development

Cowan said she thinks a lot of people are still recovering – and haven’t even realized they’re still recovering – from the impacts of the COVID pandemic.

For example, the pandemic changed how young people were able to learn and socialize and, for many postsecondary students, altered how they continued or ended that part of their education.

“I think a lot of entrepreneurs right now are looking for programming that does bring their wholeness and wellness to the forefront,” she said.

EntrepreNorth’s cohort program run every year is for eight to 10 entrepreneurs all within a similar sector, Cowan said. “And whatever they’ve got going on, our goal is to be responsive to them. Individualized mentorship is super important.”

EntrepreNorth also ensures it is able to offer childcare, bursaries and data subsidies, which are vital supports for Northerners.  

It’s also important to support the entrepreneurs after their accelerator or cohort experience is done, Cowan said. “Some of the entrepreneurs in our network are only in a place [where they’re ready] to launch their business two to three to four years after the program is done.”

Northern entrepreneurs require not only the resources to pursue their business projects, but a “runway” to figure things out themselves rather than having researchers from southern Canada or an outside evaluator coming in and saying what the impact on the North looks like, she said.

Northerners have an acute understanding of what the challenges are and also what the solutions are, she added.

Kovacs agreed, pointing out that Indigenous Peoples grew up learning “elder rhythms,” rather than algorithms. “We’ve grown up with a respect for elder rhythms. We’ve understood mentorship from the day we were born.”

Thompson said Signal49’s study found a lot of similarities and challenges shared by Northern Indigenous communities and Indigenous communities in southern Canada.

“I think a lot of the findings from the North are things that translate to the South, especially Indigenous communities in the South,” she said.

Signal49’s study made several recommendations for closing skills gaps, designing and funding skills training and investing in Indigenous workforce development. They included:

• Strengthen industry-education collaboration: Align training programs with labour market needs.
• Expand northern and rural postsecondary education pipelines: Increase the number of seats for highly trained professionals for Northern students.
• Increase work-integrated learning in high schools: Provide employers with more opportunities to promote Northern career paths.
• Shift skills training funding from short-term, project-based models to long-term investments: This facilitates strategic planning, expanding program offerings and progressive training, and reduces the administrative burden for organizations offering training.

Invest in Indigenous workforce development by:

• Supporting strategic partnerships to expand regional training.
• Providing mobile and community-based training programs for remote communities.
• Investing in wraparound supports for learners: land-based learning, student success teams with counselling and learning, supports for travel, subsidized tuition.
• Investing in professional development: promote career paths, network building, resume building and interview preparation.

“The innovation and the brilliance that exists up here is phenomenal and we see that every day with the entrepreneurs who we serve,” Cowan said.

“A really respectful partnership is one that is rooted in co-learning and figuring things out together.”

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