b"FUNDING INITIATIVESincluding funding for major infrastruc-ture construction that will include a bridge across Berens River and 25 kilometres ofProsperity can't be defined an all-season [road] that will connect to Pikangikum First Nation and a half-dozenin this province [of Ontario] other fly-in communities. moving forward unless it Ontarios $3.1-billion overall investment marks a major spike in funding opportunitiesnecessarily includes First for Indigenous communities, and a markedNations communities.change to how resource development was handled earlier. This is going to be trans-formative, Rickford says. Prosperity can'tGreg Rickford, Ontario Minister of be defined in this province moving forwardIndigenous Affairs and First Nations unless it necessarily includes First NationsEconomic Reconcilationcommunities. Over the course of the time I was the federal minister, we saw massive projects developedwhere there was very little, if any, benefit to First Nations commu-nities, not even on the supply and service [side]. Some communities in the Sudbury Basin had a greater degree of sophistica-tion and participation in it, but by and large, First Nations communities, or their busi-nesses as equity partners, had been sorely lacking. This [investment] will fundamen-tally transform that.More recently, in July, the Ontario govern-ment announced it was investing upwards of an additional $10 million and launching the Ontario Junior Exploration Program (OJEP) for 2025 to support early-stage mineral exploration. This funding comes in two streams. First, there is a New Prospector Stream, which allows licensed Ontario prospectors to apply for up to $50,000 per project, with additional Indigenous Participation Support bringing the total potential funding to $65,000 per appli-cant. Then there is Enhanced Indigenous Participation Funding, which has increased from $10,000 to $15,000 per project on top of core program funding. Rickford believes strongly that Indigenous participation in mining, or the legacy infra-structure needed to access it, is a good policy option, and successful develop-ment of the Ring of Fire will revolve around co-proponency or co-championing. In co-proponency, you have consentingthat's an important wordparties agreeing to build infrastructure and to build respon-sibleresourcedevelopmentprojects, Rickford explains. If it's done that waynot only do we proceed more easily with them, but we have a great policy option that ensures prosperity for First Nations communities matched with the province and/or surrounding municipalities.Indigenous BUSINESS REPORT25"