The head of a national aboriginal business association says resource companies in British Columbia have a long way to go in matching Alberta firms in carving out resource development opportunities with First Nations.

“Corporations in B.C. still just don’t get it,” says Dave Tuccaro, president of the National Aboriginal Business Association (NABA). “They don’t understand the importance of putting agreements together with aboriginal communities to help develop resources within British Columbia.”

Tuccaro was co-chair of a conference held in Vancouver this week, which brought together First Nations and resource industry representatives to talk about current issues and partnering opportunities as well as provide a forum for networking.

The slate of speakers at Resource Expo ’04 included business spokesmen from major international aboriginal and non-aboriginal corporations.

NITA’s Calvin Helin says Alberta firms have better understanding of issues.

One of the sessions at the conference focused on how business relationships with First Nations add value to non- aboriginal companies.

Suncor Energy’s aboriginal affairs manager Jerry Welsh says that when he first started his job 13 years ago in Fort McMurray, Suncor was doing virtually no business with aboriginal people.

“And when we were, it was generally stuff like janitorial services, or slashing and burning trees. So our strategy was to do something better,” says Welsh, a conference panelist.

One such successful project was a manufacturing facility in the isolated community of Fort Chipewyan, which is accessible only by air and by ice road in the winter.

Now in its sixth year, the facility – which is owned and operated by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation – employs nine people from the local community to manufacture a safety wrist protector for Suncor’s workers as well as for other companies. “That’s significant in a small community that’s isolated,” Welsh notes.

Welsh says Suncor had been spending about $350,000 a year to purchase the wrist protector, but felt it could probably be manufactured locally. “If we are able to do business with the local people in the community, it means that we don’t have to go to the expense of bringing people in from the outside,” he says. “Once we got beyond the idea of janitorial and chopping trees, there were a lot of other things that could happen.”

Although Suncor played a role in facilitating this project, Welsh says, “I want to make sure it is understood that it is their success more than it is ours.”

Another speaker at the conference was Chief Garry Oker of the Doig River First Nation in northeastern British Columbia.

“What I really want to talk about is that we need to re-align our relationship with government and industry,” Oker said in an interview prior to the conference. “First Nations need to realign and create a new relationship with government and industry. For years and years the conflict over the land issues has been in place. We need to put it to rest once and for all.”

Oker’s presentation focused on the development of oil and gas resources in the Doig River First Nation area, about 65 kilometres northeast of Fort St. John. He says he drew on information from a thesis he is currently writing for a master’s degree at Royal Roads University in Victoria.

His thesis, titled Storytelling Information Management Systems, examines the significance of storytelling. “We are all coming from a different story background, especially in regards to the oil and gas story,” he says.

“We could talk about the $50-plus prices, and why there is a lot of demand for it and a lot of development. But if you look at the First Nations’ story, the land is being industrialized without assessing the rights of First Nations people.

“There are all kinds of information gaps out there that we have discovered and we want all this to be on the table so that we can do better management of the area.”

Promoting aboriginal business success stories is the goal of the Vancouver-based Native Investment and Trade Association (NITA), which staged the conference and NEXUS Trade Show that ran concurrently.

NITA president Calvin Helin says the conference was moved to Vancouver from Calgary, where it has been held for the past two years, because an increasing amount of resource development is taking place in B.C.

“We hoped to get more B.C. corporate involvement, but it has been very limited,” says Helin. “I think probably the companies in Alberta have been dealing with aboriginal issues for a longer period and have more of an understanding of why it is in their self-interest to involve aboriginal people and groups in their business activities from Square 1.”

NABA’s Tuccaro says that when the Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association was established 10 years ago, the nine aboriginal founding businesses were doing $40 million a year in business collectively. Now the association, of which he is president, has 85 native company members doing an estimated $400 million in business collectively.

“It shows the huge growth in a fairly short period of time in the native business community, because the oilsands industries are willing to work with us and help us develop businesses that supply them with services,” he says.

However, Tuccaro says he thinks one of the major reasons B.C. industry doesn’t consider the native community a valuable partner is because of the unresolved land claims in the province.

“If there are areas they are going into that still have the land-claim problem looming, obviously the security is not there anymore,” he says, adding governments also have to step up to the plate to resolve these outstanding issues.

“If companies don’t come to this conference, it doesn’t bother us,” Tuccaro adds. “What’s going to happen in the longer term is they are going to lose out, because companies coming in from Alberta can make deals with First Nations in British Columbia.”

“What we were hoping by bringing the conference to Vancouver is to get more B.C. corporations involved in resource development, especially where it impacts the aboriginal community.

“But that didn’t happen and it isn’t happening, and I guess that in itself is a story.”

(Jan Mansfield can be reached at jan@businesssedge.ca)