The CFI was created in the late 1990s during Paul Martin’s tenure as Minister of Finance. Also during that time, he erased Canada’s deficit, subsequently recording five consecutive budget surpluses, and set Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio on a steady downward track.

In 1999, as co-founder of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, he served as its inaugural chair and continued in that position for three years.

As Prime Minister, he set in place a 10-year plan to improve health care and reduce wait times. He signed agreements with the provinces and territories to establish the first national early learning and childcare program and created a new financial deal for Canada’s municipalities. Following an 18-month consultation process involving Canada’s provinces, territories, First Nations, the Métis Nation and Inuit Leaders, the Federal Government reached a historic consensus with the 2005 Kelowna Accord to eliminate funding gaps in health, education, housing and clean water for Indigenous people.

After leaving politics, he founded the Martin Family Initiative, a charitable organization focusing on the early childhoods and elementary and secondary education of Indigenous children and youth.

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Chantelle Richmond is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Western University in London, Ont., where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health and the Environment.

She is Leader of Ontario’s Indigenous Mentorship Network . Her research is based on a community-centred model that explores the intersection of Indigenous people’s health and knowledge systems within the context of global environmental change. Along with colleagues and community partners in Canada, Hawaii and New Zealand, her current research examines concepts and applied processes of environmental repossession.

Tania Willard works with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Indigenous and other cultures and within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production.

Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery, and her public art projects include Rule of the Trees in 2019, (Commercial-Broadway SkyTrain station in Vancouver) and If the Drumming Stops in 2021, with artist Peter Morin, on the lands of the Papaschase First Nation in Edmonton.

As assistant professor in Creative Studies at UBCO, Willard’s current research focuses on Secwépemc aesthetics, language, land rights and interrelated Indigenous art practices. She also has an ongoing collaborative project, BUSH gallery, which is a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledge and relational art practices.

Willard received her Master of Fine Arts at UBCO.

Read Dr. Runte's bio