Raising the health and clean energy bar on First Nations

Nora Murdock used to burn wood to heat her house on the Fisher River Cree Nation reserve in Manitoba, rather than relying on electric heat. She liked the heat that a fire gave off, like a comforting warm blanket. But it was often a challenge to keep it burning through the night — and it also left Murdock collecting wood during Manitoba's bitter winters.

When Murdock had geothermal heating installed, she was relieved. She no longer had to venture outside in the cold and the geothermal heat pump’s warmth reminded her of the wood stove of her childhood.

That was about a decade ago. Since then, dozens of houses on the Fisher River and Peguis First Nations have had similar devices installed, including that of Murdock’s sister.

The new wave of installations was financed by the Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds, which has adapted an emerging social finance model. The fund also financed the training of several community members who now perform the installations. 

Jeff Cyr is a founder of the fund. He spent years understanding the ins and outs of private finance at Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, an associated venture capital firm. Now, he is solely focused on helping communities finance their own social programs based on their particular needs. 

The model works like this: a community approaches the Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds and proposes their social program — for example, geothermal installations for Peguis and Fisher River, or a diabetes program in northern Manitoba to provide diabetes care. Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds then takes stock of assets, data, evidence and people to do the work. 

Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds will then approach the outcome purchaser, usually a government, and ask them to support the project. The upfront capital is then raised through philanthropy and private capital, while governments backstop and pay for successful milestones. 

Cyr describes it as a two-headed contract. The first is with the service provider, who will do the work on the ground. The second is with the government, who will pay for the successful outcomes when they are reached. 

It's a community-driven solution produced from an “old technology” used by Indigenous people: sitting around the council fire, discussing the problem at hand and finding local solutions involving all members of the community and their differing perspectives. 

It’s a model that runs counter to what Cyr calls “pan-Canadian” programs, which often fail to account for the nuances of particular communities and leave Indigenous nations pigeonholed. 

“I'm okay with shifting the power locus from the hands of the federal and provincial government into the hands of Indigenous governments and Indigenous people,” Cyr said. 

Wáhiakatste Diome-Deer, strategy and business development director at Raven Indigenous Outcomes Fund, says outcome-based funding is more in line with a “common sense approach to just solving problems on the ground that we see, with the tools that are available to us,” compared to government programs often developed in Ottawa and provincial capitals. 

It also led to the $5.3-million outcomes contract in Peguis and Fisher River that retrofitted 425 homes with added geothermal ground source systems — a fund now valued at $7.9 million. The model has also created economic opportunities by training 15 community members in HVAC to perform the installations.

Amy Tuck, manager of residential and Indigenous programs at Efficiency Manitoba, calls the outcome in Fisher River and Peguis a “huge success.” 

“Communities are leading this, and we are contributing to economic reconciliation by identifying the outcomes they want,” she said. 

The target is currently set at 100 geothermal heat pump installations a year in the homes of Peguis and Fisher River citizens. Tuck hopes to expand the program to other First Nations in Manitoba and raise the target to 200 per year. 

“The intention here has always been to scale, especially given the fact that it is instant savings,” she said. 

Expansion is also top of mind for Cyr and Diome-Deer at the fund. Their projects are getting larger, with a recent contract of $11.5 million, which is about one fifth of its current $50-million fund. 

“I can see a growth arc in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative