Indigenous businesses make a valuable contribution to Canada’s economy, but we still have much to learn about what makes them distinct.
Indigenous-owned businesses can play a strong role in the economy.
Indigenous people in Canada have historically been excluded from many economic opportunities. Colonialism and discrimination have made it hard for Indigenous Peoples to participate fully in the economy. This exclusion has limited the development of Indigenous economies in ways we are still working to understand and address. Even though Indigenous economies have improved significantly by many measures, economic inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people remain. Consumer prices and business activity are two key measures that economists use to understand the economy, and we lack information about how these are different in Indigenous communities. The Bank of Canada sets monetary policy to control inflation for the whole country, but it is important that we understand how people and regions experience inflation differently, and that includes Indigenous communities.
Consumer prices on First Nations reserves
The consumer price index (CPI) measures annual inflation by comparing current prices of goods and services to prices a year ago. It plays an important role in the Bank of Canada’s understanding of the economy. We know that prices for goods and services are higher in many Indigenous communities. But we don’t know if inflation—the pace of price increases—is higher on reserves than in other communities. This gap in our knowledge exists because the CPI does not include information about prices in on-reserve First Nations communities. As a result, we don’t know whether the prices in these communities respond to economic forces differently than they do elsewhere.
Learn more about the many factors that make Indigenous economies distinct.
To learn more about these and other topics, please visit the Bank of Canada’s website at: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/11/learning-more-about-indigenous-economies/