Duane Hicks
Chief Sarah Mainville is positive about opportunities for Couchiching First Nation in 2016.
And with the band election set for Feb. 24, she is hopeful she’ll get another two years to work with the band council and continue the work they’ve started to see those plans carried through.
“We’ve done a lot on the financial end of things,” Chief Mainville noted. “We’ve straightened out some policies and we’re really focused on better investments in Couchiching.
For example, Couchiching has been successful making headway in the past year with its economic development corporation, Wasaw Enterprises.
“The board’s been doing really well,” said Chief Mainville.
“We have a non-political board so it’s all business leaders, entrepreneurs from Couchiching on the board, and they’d been working hard on growing some of our different corporations,” she remarked.
For instance, Wasaw Food Services, in partnership with Big Grassy First Nation, is providing lunch services at New Gold’s mine construction sites.
With Wasaw Construction, the board has been looking to get subcontracts with contractors they’re involved with locally or at the tribal level.
“If there’s a big contract that goes, we try to get our equipment moving,” Chief Mainville explained.
“We don’t have a lot—we’re just purchasing more equipment this year—but we just have a Bobcat and little pieces of machinery we can get involved in projects now,” she noted.
Meanwhile, Wasaw Development is looking to find investors for the Nickel Lake property Couchiching purchased from the estate of William Fontana last year.
“We’re looking at commercial investments and partners on the Highway 11 property,” Chief Mainville said.
“We envision it not being dissimilar to what’s going on in the west end of Fort Frances happening here along Highway 11, including some properties in Couchiching,” she added.
“We are looking at developing the entire highway corridor east of Fort Frances.”
The vacant land adjacent to the Lakeview Trailer Park, across from the Nanicost/School Road, also was purchased.
The land—commerically zoned in the Town of Fort Frances—now is owned by Wasaw Development.
Couchiching also should have more money for housing after getting approved last year for a project called the First Nations Market Housing Fund.
“It’s a large fund,” Chief Mainville noted. “We can access up to $5 million for it, so we’ve been doing the policy framework around that.
“It’s going to be a lot of housing opportunities for community members that qualify for mortgages to build in Couchiching,” she added.
“It’s really significant.”
In simplest terms, the housing fund means there’s more funding for “complete homes.”
“With the other funding that we got from the federal government, we couldn’t necessarily complete a home,” Chief Mainville explained.
“There was a lot of stuff that basically were wanting in the home models that we purchased and the construction end of things,” she said.
“We really didn’t complete homes in the past.
“Now the standards can be higher, the materials can better—because it is a market-based home, they’ll be better homes,” she stressed.
Couchiching also is looking at expanding its gaming operations beyond the Bingo hall there.
Chief Mainville said the band invested some money into a feasibility study on a casino, as well as to get a conservative forecasting of what the revenues could be and who the customers would be.
“It shows that a casino would be feasible in this region,” she noted.
“So that’s something we are going to continue to talk to the province . . . about.”
Chief Mainville added she’s aware Fort Frances council has mulled the idea of a casino in town in recent years, but Couchiching has taken the bull by the horns and is “doing the legwork.”
“We’re getting the documents done so that we can actually make a good case for a licensed casino in this region,” she remarked.
“We’ve been meeting with different officials,” she continued. “We haven’t had a formal meeting with the premier on this issue but we’ve met with people in finance and people at OLG.
“It’s definitely a big ‘get’—a big, big ‘get’—so it’s something we have to spend some time on.”
Chief Mainville also is optimistic the parties involved will come to final agreement over the land claim matters at Point Park.
“I’m hoping we’ll resolve some of the issues—and I have to say they’re pretty minor now,” she noted.
“We’ve worked with the Town of Fort Frances and the other First Nations [Naicatchewenin, Nigigoonsiminikaaning, and Mitaanjigamiing], and we have some minor issues in front of us,” she conceded.
“But I think we can work through them and have a resolution—I’m hoping this calendar year.”
As well, Chief Mainville wants to find a way to get affordable energy for Couchiching.
“I’ve been working closely both with Hydro One and with the Province of Ontario trying to deal with the cost of delivering electricity to Couchiching and the costs that our residents have to pay,” she noted.
“So we’re working on a number of things.
“I understand that the more customers we have here in Couchiching, the less we all pay for delivery,” added Chief Mainville.
“So I’m trying to get some industry possibly—a bigger customer—to come and help us share the load of having electricity here in Couchiching.”
She even has approached the Town of Fort Frances to see if Couchiching somehow can be included in the Fort Frances Power Corp. service area and is waiting for an answer.
“I haven’t heard anything but we’ll continue to work on that relationship,” Chief Mainville said.
“Maybe that’s the best solution—that we’re in the Fort Frances Power Corp. service area? Maybe there’s another solution with Hydro One?
“I’m working all avenues with that.”
Chief Mainville also said she was very pleased that Couchiching was involved in some area events last year, particularly “Duncan Keith Day” and having the Stanley Cup brought here.
“I thought that was amazing for the kids,” she enthused. “Not just the kids—there were actually a few elders there that are long-time Blackhawks’ fans.
“It was really an amazing day for us,” added Chief Mainville.
“I really like that we were included in that. It was just wonderful.”
On the federal level, Chief Mainville said she’s interested to see how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his new Liberal government carry through with their promises.
“I’m very optimistic but I’m also going to try to manage expectations,” she remarked.
“There’s a lot of expectations with the new federal government that we’re going to make big headway in a lot of big, big problems, and I think that ill-defines the problems because some of them are pretty big,” she noted, citing hydro costs as one example.
Chief Mainville noted that many times, what First Nations need to do is counter-intuitive to some of the companies they deal with and partnerships they have.
“It’s always been really difficult to sort of captain our issues when we are swimming upstream,” she admitted.
