Nbisiing Power Grand Opening
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Nbisiing Power’s opening ceremony on May 27th was a huge success, with great representation from the Nipissing First Nation community, it's leaders and from industry suppliers. Several executives from partner suppliers made the trip and it was great to have them there taking time away from their businesses to support Nbisiing Power. Special thanks to Christine Goulais for all her hard work to pull the event together.
With the business now open and active, several job postings are currently active as the company is looking to grow! Those interested can find the postings on the NFN website.
Nbisiing Power will be lead by a CEO, the current Acting CEO is Christine Goulais. The CEO will be supported by four board members Dwayne Nashkawa and Brendan Huston from NFN and Richard Booy and Rob McNeil from Composite Power Group. Richard Booy will also act as strategic advisor to Nbisiing Power to assist the CEO with day to day operations.
Please find the news - and our own - coverage of the event in detail below!
This morning Nbisiing Power opened its doors for business and unveiled its new head office at 132 Osprey Miikan in the Bineshii Small Business Centre near Yellek. Anishinabek Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe was there to help celebrate the grand opening, as was Nipissing First Nation (NFN) Chief Scott McLeod, who mentioned that the Small Business Centre is filling up fast, “and it’s a good problem to have.”
Nbisiing Power (pronounced bee-sing, the ‘n’ is silent) doesn’t sell power. You can’t visit the office and ask them to hook your home up to their grid. What Nbisiing Power provides is equipment to the energy sector, and the company will act as a reseller of electrical power equipment, explained Christine Goulais, the acting Chief Executive Officer for Nbisiing Power.
Nbisiing Power will provide an Indigenous procurement opportunity to large utilities who are sourcing electrical equipment. Corporate Canada “has made some significant commitments related to Indigenous procurement,” Goulais explained, and Nbisiing power aims to help ease the procurement process in the energy industry.
The company is a partnership between NFN, which is the majority owner, and Composite Power Group. The new business is focused “on building cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with communities, customers and manufacturers,” Goulais said.
She continued: “we plan to branch out to other key customers across Canada as we grow the sustainability of the business.” If all goes well, Nbisiing Power will “provide a long stable revenue stream for the community.” Already, the company is looking to fill two more positions, Goulais explained, and hope to add a few more in the upcoming years.
But that, acting CEO Christine Goulais says, is only the beginning.
“There are a lot of areas we are looking at” for future growth, Goulais said, with the potential in the future to branch into other areas, which include using existing local businesses and suppliers to support continued economic growth in the community, the potential to assemble and distribute products in the community, developing relationships with manufacturers and customers to create inventory within the community as well as working with other First Nation communities.
Right now, though, “our focus is working with the companies that want to work with us.”
She said the grand opening of the office at the Bineshii Small Business Centre near Yellek on Highway 17 provides an “exciting opportunity for the community.”
She said the alliance with Composite Power Group is “an innovative partnership” which has been in the works for more than a year. She said the company is “building relationships with large utilities” and getting the word out “about who we are and what we do.
“This is an opportunity to build something for those generations which will come after us.”
Richard Booy, president and CEO of Composite Power, said the partnership with Nbisiing Power “started as a business opportunity, but quickly turned into a passion.”
In addition to the partnership, he said he has “become good friends” with members of the community and the people involved in Nbisiing Power, who are “all about community.”
Booy noted that in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report is Call to Action 92, which calls on the corporate sector “to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and to apply its principles, norms, and standards to corporate policy and core operational activities involving Indigenous peoples and their lands and resources.”
Specifically, it calls on corporate Canada to “commit to meaningful consultation, building respectful relationships, and obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before proceeding with economic development projects” to ensure that Indigenous peoples “have equitable access to jobs, training, and education opportunities in the corporate sector, and that Aboriginal communities gain long-term sustainable benefits from economic development projects.”
“Canadian companies bought into it,” Booy said.
A business like Nbisiing Power represents NFN’s “sovereignty and our independence as a nation,” explained Chief McLeod, “to be able to create opportunities” within the community.
“Funding our own programs,” he continued, allows the First Nation to “direct our own destiny” and continue to develop “economic activities in our nation.”
He looks forward to working with Composite Power Group, anticipating that “this strategic business partnership will ultimately help NFN diversify our economy and build capacity in a relatively new industry where there are plenty of opportunities that aren’t currently being realized.”
“First Nations community have been handcuffed by government funding and the Indian Act for a hundred years,” McLeod said.
The new business, owned by Nipissing First Nation and Composite Power Group, is a means to “achieve where we want to be as a sovereign nation, to steer our destiny as a nation” and to use the economic opportunity to forge ahead as a community.
“We look forward to working with our new partners to maximize this opportunity and deliver benefits for our community through employment and revenue generation.”
McLeod said First Nations such as Nipissing “are looking to be real partners” with corporate Canada, “not tokens”. “We are not asking for handouts. We are asking for hand-ups.”
Sources:
Video coverage by CTV News: https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/mobile/video?clipId=2451984
Images provided by Sofa Communications (www.sofacommunications.ca)
https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/nipissing-first-nation-launches-nbisiing-power-5415382
https://www.nugget.ca/news/nbisiing-power-about-sovereignty-mcleod
