Excerpt:
Vaughn: I would say that for any successful economic development, you need personnel with an education. You need to be able to get along and have background knowledge of things. Programs like CANDO’s Certification Process, or university or college — every province has community economic development programs. For any successful economic development, education is one part of it. The second part is getting some mentorship from other First Nations. Let’s say you want to build a hotel, for example. Go and visit Tribal Council Investment Group in Winnipeg. They bought a hotel, I believe it’s a Radisson located in downtown Winnipeg; go to Osoyoos, see how the Spirit Ridge Resort was developed. For me, a First Nation can save a lot of time and energy and avoid mistakes by going and speaking with experienced people. And across the country we have enough examples so that economic development people can go and see a successful project and bring back the how-to guideline for their own community. I would say building relationships with other First Nations, or with other business groups that have had success, and getting some good advice from them, is a very important path to success for individual First Nations and economic development people.