Gwaii Trust got a $62-million wish when it turned 30 this year.
In March, after more than a decade of negotiating with the B.C. and federal governments about its legal status and how it could be used, the $62-million Athlii Gwaii Legacy Trust fund was finally released to the Gwaii Trust Society.
It means Gwaii Trust now has two funds worth a total of $157 million, up from $95 million, that it can invest to fund projects and programs on Haida Gwaii.
Keeping with the spirit of its original goal, to compensate forestry companies after Gwaii Haanas was protected from further logging, the Athlii Gwaii Legacy Trust will remain separate from the existing Gwaii Trust fund and it will focused on funding economic development.
The Gwaii Trust directors are now working on the details for the new funding programs, having held a series of town hall meetings across Haida Gwaii last year to gather ideas.
But, broadly speaking, the Athlii Gwaii Fund will have three main goals: to revitalize the Haida Gwaii economy, to provide more renewable energy on island, and to restore the local environment.
“It’s very exciting, because we need this money injected into our communities on Haida Gwaii ASAP,” said Percy Crosby, Huux̱, chair of the Gwaii Trust Society.
Crosby spoke just before he and fellow Athlii Gwaii trustees Maureen Bailey and Freda Davis signed the papers to make the transfer official last month at the Gwaii Trust Society AGM in Skidegate.
“Logging — it’s not there anymore, let’s be honest,” Crosby added. “Fishing — it’s almost gone.”
“We want these communities to thrive, and they are going to thrive because of this money.”
While the release of the Athlii Gwaii Fund took the cake, Gwaii Trust is celebrating a second milestone for its 30th anniversary.
Sometime later this year, the Gwaii Trust is expecting to hit the $100 million mark for total spending on Haida Gwaii community-building projects and programs since it started in 1994.
“That’s amazing,” Crosby said.
Carla Lutner, Gwaii Trust’s chief executive officer, said last year saw more project spending than usual, $3.7 million, largely because a few major construction projects are underway.
One is the Skidegate Wellness Centre, Xaaynangaa Naay (“House of Life”), to which Gwaii Trust contributed about $1 million for the centre itself, and another $616,000 for the adjacent elders building.
In Old Massett, Gwaii Trust committed a further $1.7 million towards the new Secretariat of the Haida Nation administration building project that just broke ground.
Other large projects to receive Gwaii Trust funding in 2023 include the new library and Haida language lab in Masset, and the Old Massett Village Council shops project, which each received $200,000.
Among its 2023 program spending, Gwaii Trust spent $331,000 on nearly 200 Continuing Education grants — smaller grants that help Haida Gwaii residents cover course costs for all kinds of post-secondary education and training.
At the AGM, Derek Lamb, an auditor with the chartered professional accountants firm Chan Nowosad Boates, presented an audit report on Gwaii Trust’s books.
Lamb said the audit was very clean, with no concerns.
The amount of money Gwaii Trust is actually free to spend did go down between 2021 and 2023, he said, but only because Gwaii Trust had to add more money to its core investment fund of $72 million to protect it against rising inflation.
“It’s forcing you to put more money aside to protect that core investment,” he said.
The auditors report also looked at the amount of money Gwaii Trust spends on administration compared with similar non-profits in B.C.
While it is hard to make apples-to-apples comparison, Lamb said Gwaii Trust’s administrative costs are lower than those of other funders, such as the Vancouver Foundation. In the last four years, Gwaii Trust’s administrative costs have been less than one per cent of its net assets, while last year the Vancouver Foundation’s were 1.3 per cent.
“I think that context is very important,” he said.