Drumbeats - Canadian Indigenous Investment Podcast · Canadian Indigenous Investment Summit

Tracee Smith: The On-Reserve Lending Gap and the Private Credit Opportunity

·43 min·3 clips

Tracee Smith says banks have a “capacity mismatch” and still rely on 1960s and 1970s policies.

1. Drumbeats - Canadian Indigenous Investment Podcast focuses on Tracee Smith and Kiwi Wind Capital’s approach to financing Indigenous housing on reserve in Canada. 2. Host Rob Brandt speaks with Tracee Smith, President and CEO of Kiwi Wind Capital, and Smith brings experience as a Missinabi Cree entrepreneur and founder of Outside Looking In. 3. The episode asks how private credit can close the on-reserve lending gap that banks and government programs have left open. 4. Smith says she grew up near Wawa and Timmins in Ontario, spent time in Missinabi Cree territory, and made a personal decision to contribute to her community. 5. She describes dancing from age 4, earning a university degree in dance, and teaching hip hop in reserves because it was accessible for kids. 6. Smith says she launched Outside Looking In after a week in a remote community where a Friday performance brought tears to community members and the children. 7. She says the program later became a grade 7 to 12 high school credit dance program with leadership and career partnerships, including RBC and Sun Life. 8. Smith says she had already been interested in housing before Outside Looking In, because she saw how sleep, repairs, and overcrowding affected children and families. 9. She says the idea for Kiwi Wind came from investors who wanted their money to do more than sit in a GIC and still produce a return. 10. Smith says she pitched the fund idea to two banks in 2014, but they could not understand it, so she waited until her children were older and then started the company with a seed investor. 11. She says Kiwi Wind prioritizes on-reserve First Nations communities because off-reserve projects are easier for banks to finance. 12. Smith says banks are “lazy lenders” who follow old manuals, rely on land security, and often do not understand the Indian Act or reserve lending. 13. She gives a Saskatoon example where a bank required a modular house on wooden stilts so it could be repossessed if needed. 14. Smith says some communities use leased land to make banks comfortable, but that arrangement often serves lender security more than community benefit. 15. She explains that Kiwi Wind works with CMHC’s Section 95 social housing program, advancing capital for up to three years of homes before CMHC takes out the loan. 16. Smith says Vancity will act as a takeout partner on larger deals where CMHC is not the final buyer, including construction-to-completion financing. 17. She says the hardest part is funding design through final completion, because communities often wait years for ISC or CMHC dollars. 18. Smith says a Manitoba project involves a $25 million deal, 30 modular homes, and infrastructure for 200 units, with several Section 95 projects also under review. 19. The conversation is interview-driven, practical, and detailed, with Smith speaking in plain language about banks, CMHC, ISC, and construction risk. 20. Listeners interested in Indigenous housing finance, impact investing, and infrastructure lending would likely stay engaged; listeners seeking light entertainment probably would not.

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