When Ernie Daniels was appointed to the Bank of Canada’s board of directors in January 2023, he became the first Indigenous leader to receive the honour. It was a major step forward for Indigenous Canadians, and the culmination of years of hard work by Daniels.
“I’m not a person that likes to pound my chest, but it’s a huge accomplishment for Indigenous and First Nations people as we move forward,” he said. “It leaves the opportunity for First Nations to continue being on the board of the central bank.”
Born into a household with no TV or running water, Daniels was raised and educated in the Northwest Territories. A member of the Salt River First Nation on the banks of the Slave River, he grew up in an area known for its bison, whitewater rapids and white pelicans. After graduating from high school, he worked for Environment Canada as a hydrometric survey technician, taking inventories of rivers and lakes.
Deciding he wanted to pursue a career in public and business administration, Daniels took a course at Arctic College (now Aurora College), excelled in accounting and soon became a certified general accountant. He went into public practice in Yellowknife and started working with Indigenous development corporations. He became chair of the Northwest Territories Development Corp., a Crown corporation whose mandate was to create employment and income opportunities.
Around this time, Daniels became a chair of the society that helped build a permanent legislative building for the Northwest Territories.
“The assembly in the Northwest Territories didn’t have a permanent home,” he explained. “They would go from community to community where they held sessions.”
He also helped establish the Métis-Dene Development Fund that lends to Métis and First Nations businesses in the Northwest Territories, and was a founding director of a non-profit association that provided affordable housing to Indigenous people in Yellowknife.
Eventually, Daniels found himself in Ottawa working with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which used a $350 million federal grant to address the legacy of residential schools through community healing programs. “I made a lot of contacts and built a network of community members that really benefited me later on in life,” he said.
From there, he went on to work with the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of Canada (AFOA Canada), whose mandate was to build skills and capacity for financial officers in Indigenous communities, leading to an improved quality of life through better program management. Through AFOA Canada, Daniels helped create a Certified Aboriginal Financial Manager certification program in partnership with CGA (now CPA) Canada.
Since 2012, Daniels has served as president and CEO of the First Nations Finance Authority (FNFA). A non-profit financial institution, FNFA has a financing model that allows it to go directly to capital markets to borrow and fund projects related to infrastructure, health, schools, roads, resource development and alternative energy. FNFA has raised close to $3 billion since 2014, has respectable credit ratings and has attracted investors from as far away as South Korea, Europe and the Middle East.
One of FNFA’s notable projects was funding seven Mi’kmaq communities to take a 50-per-cent equity stake in Clearwater Seafoods, the largest seafood company in North America. Under Daniels’ leadership, FNFA has gone to the capital markets 11 times.
“The work that we’re doing here is so groundbreaking,” he said. “The other Indigenous countries like Australia and the U.S., they want to do what we’re doing.”
Daniels said he encountered challenges early on in his accounting career, and had to push himself to grow and adapt.
“I was a single father at the time, trying to maintain family life and work in a balance,” he said. “I had to overcome a fear of change. When an opportunity came to me, I had to overcome that fear of the unknown and what to expect.”
Now, Daniels is motivated to create a better quality of life for Indigenous communities, help them achieve economic self-sufficiency and close the infrastructure gap that exists between First Nations and mainstream Canada. He is grateful to the teams that have supported him along his journey, and tells youth that they shouldn’t give up when things get tough.
“When you start something, don’t quit,” he said. “If you fail at it and want to do something else, you are still learning something from it. When an opportunity comes to you, take a chance and look at it. It may not be what you need at this point in time, but whatever you learn from it is going to help you grow as a person.”
