Kristan Straub in Toronto on Tuesday.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
If Canada manages to get major resource and infrastructure projects built faster, Kristan Straub will be at least partially responsible for that success.
The career mining executive and member of the Henvey Inlet First Nation started work Tuesday as the inaugural chief executive officer of the Canada Indigenous Loan Guarantee Corp. (CILGC). Established in late 2024 as a subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corp. (CDEV), the CILGC provides government loan guarantees to help Indigenous communities take ownership stakes in major developments.
Mr. Straub views the program as a key enabler of economic reconciliation and an important evolution from the more adversarial approach Ottawa has taken in the past toward its constitutional duty to consult with First Nations people.
“This is not something that comes from a perspective of a ‘here’s the project, take the project and this is what it is going to be,’” Mr. Straub said in an interview. “As an equity interest holder, you are intimately involved in the design and the expected outcomes and I think that is a major opportunity for a shift in Canada.”
Mr. Straub is a geologist by training, with more than two decades of experience in nickel mining working primarily with Glencore PLC. He was most recently CEO of Wyloo Canada, which has assets in Ontario’s Ring of Fire region.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to make partnering with Indigenous communities central to Ottawa’s resource development plans. Mr. Carney spent much of Tuesday’s meeting with Coastal First Nations in British Columbia discussing major projects the government hopes to advance quickly in the region.
Because the federal Indian Act prevents Indigenous Canadians from owning reserve land – reserves are legally considered Crown land that has been designated for Indigenous use – it cannot be used as collateral for loans. The CILGC, which was established after more than a decade of lobbying by groups such as the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, is intended to compensate for that restriction.
Originally authorized to provide up to $5-billion in loan guarantees, the federal government doubled the CILGC’s funding capacity to $10-billion just one week after Mr. Carney took office. At the time, the First Nations Major Projects Coalition said at least $50-billion will be needed over the next 10 years to finance Indigenous equity investments in major projects on Indigenous land – efforts worth a combined $630-billion.
CDEV spent more than a year and worked with two different executive search firms – Pathways Executive Search and Boyden Canada – to find the right leader who could build up the CILGC.
“We were looking for a specific combination of skills and expertise, and Indigenous leadership was critical,” CDEV CEO Elizabeth Wademan said in an interview. “This is a highly visible role. This is a role where you are in the room with some of the most important people across the country.”
“We also understand that the credibility of the program is linked to the team that you put around it,” Ms. Wademan said.
2024: Indigenous loan guarantee program could transform resource sector in Canada
The program made its first deal – a $400-million loan guarantee to a group of First Nations that acquired a stake in a natural gas pipeline network from Enbridge Inc. – in May, 2025. Several key hires have been made since then, including chief financial officer Annie Sismanian, who previously worked with Mr. Straub at Wyloo.
Tens of other applications have also been reviewed to date, CDEV said in a release, and roughly 275 meetings have been conducted as part of its outreach efforts so far.
“Much of my time will be spent across Canada, wherever the projects are,” Mr. Straub said. “I imagine there will be a considerable amount of travel.”
Ms. Wademan said the CILGC could eventually have a total head count of roughly 30, but that hiring decisions would be up to Mr. Straub. Once he has a core team in place, Mr. Straub hopes to accelerate the process of approving new loan guarantees.
“The aim is to have a corporation that is up and running at the speed at which business needs it to run at,” he said.
He already has some experience co-ordinating relations between Indigenous communities and private corporations building on their land. Most notably, his community partnered with Pattern Energy Group Inc. to build a massive wind farm on the northeast shore of Georgian Bay, which was completed in 2019 and produces enough electricity to power roughly 100,000 homes.
“That was a risk that our community took without any loan guarantee program at that point in time,” Mr. Straub said. “My belief is that through the loan guarantee program, we can enable more communities to take a community-centred approach for projects.”