Canada’s Strongest Economic Engine Is Indigenous and It Just Grew 60% – The Hill Times
April 27, 2026
Indigenous businesses are the growth story Canada keeps pretending not to see. They are scaling fast, running tight books, and already anchoring the supply chains the whole country relies on. These are not “up‑and‑comers”. They are the engine under Canada’s economy, and the only real question is whether we let them run at full power or keep riding the brakes.
Backed by the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA) and 51 Indigenous Financial Institutions (IFIs), Indigenous entrepreneurs are quietly doing something the rest of the economy is struggling to pull off: real growth, in real communities, with real discipline. In 2022, this network lent 109.7 million dollars. By 2025, that had climbed to 176 million dollars. That’s a 60.1 percent jump in three years, driven by Indigenous people building businesses in places most commercial banks still treat as “too hard.”
