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Ontario First Nations leadership declared an historic breakthrough and nuclear critics warned of risks ahead Tuesday after Williams Treaties First Nations (WTFN) and the Ontario and federal governments announced a roughly $715-million investment in small modular reactor (SMR) development at the Darlington nuclear station.

“This represents the largest collective First Nation investment in a nuclear generation project in Canada,” Chippewas of Rama First Nation Chief Ted Williams told a media conference in Clarington, Ontario, as reported by Windspeaker. “And today’s announcement is much more than the size of the investment. It is about what the investment makes possible. “It’s about creating opportunities for future generations. It’s about creating long-term economic benefits that will help to support the priorities identified by our First Nations, whether it’s housing, education, language revitalization, health and wellness, infrastructure, economic development, and opportunities for our youth.”

“Love is not measured by what you say,” Williams added. “It’s measured by what you leave behind and the impact that you have on your community, on your people, on your family. And the choices we make today will help shape the future generations that will inherit tomorrow.”

“With treaty rights that are constitutionally recognized, our Nations are now invited as decision-makers to consider economic development opportunities in our treaty territory that would never otherwise have been made available,” added Chief Kelly LaRocca of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation. “No longer on the periphery, we celebrate today as one example of what can happen when First Nations work together toward a shared vision for our communities.”

Windspeaker says the investment will be shared among the seven WTFN nations: Alderville First Nation, Beausoleil First Nation, Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, Chippewas of Rama, Curve Lake First Nation, Hiawatha First Nation, and Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

“This investment demonstrates the power of partnership to drive economic opportunity and long-term growth,” said Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy. “By bringing together First Nations communities, governments, and industry, we are helping to build the infrastructure and investment climate that will support Ontario’s prosperity for generations to come.”

“This is what being an energy superpower looks like,” added federal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

Tuesday’s agreement calls for a loan from WTFN to Darlington New Nuclear Project LP (DNNP LP) to help fund the first of four SMRs at Darlington. Darlington New Nuclear is made up of WTFN itself, the two governments, and Ontario Power Generation. OPG is the majority owner of DNNP LP, alongside the Canada Growth Fund and the Building Ontario Fund, the province said. The loan, backed by guarantees from the Canadian Indigenous Loan Guarantee Corporation and the provincial Indigenous Opportunities Financing Program, will become an equity investment once all four reactors have been built.

“SMRs cost billions to construct, so this investment provides First Nations a ‘significant minority interest’ in the project,” Windspeaker says. “The exact percentage of ownership is still to be determined.” The published price of the project is $7.7 billion for the first reactor and $20.9 billion to collect the whole set of four, but critics say SMRs are still an early-stage technology with unpredictable costs and scant interest from private investors.

That means the transfer of federal and provincial funds will leave the seven First Nations “very much as minority investors” in the project “with little actual say” about how it unfolds, a veteran observer told The Energy Mix. While details of the deal are still emerging, even a “symbolic” ownership stake in the range of about 5% could leave the communities with major financial liabilities if anything goes wrong with the first-if-its-kind project.

Nor is it clear that an SMR is the best way for the communities to invest $700 million if their goal is to maximize financial returns and community benefits. So far, the project is funded entirely by federal and provincial governments and agencies because “private capital won’t touch this stuff,” the observer said.

While the province said the four SMRs together will generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity, the WTFN investment will apply to one-quarter of that, or 300 MW. According to the Regenerative Energy survey released earlier this month by Indigenous Clean Energy, medium- to large-scale renewable energy projects across Canada with Indigenous co-ownership or defined commercial interests offer 20,848 MW of capacity, and 59 of the 251 projects in operation so far are in Ontario.

The June, 2026 Indigenous Energy Monitor lists 132 Indigenous-owned energy projects in the province, the London Free Press writes: 44 solar, 29 energy storage, 19 hydroelectric, 18 wind, three bioenergy, and one nuclear.

The WTFN announcement came just a day after federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson unveiled a new plan for a “civilian nuclear renaissance” that calls for 10 new reactors by 2041 and a doubling of uranium exports by 2035, but provides no new funding for the effort. Prof. M.V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia, cited the cost of the technology—compared to solar, wind, and battery storage bids that are already winning contracts in Ontario—as the strategy’s main obstacle.

“This talk about a nuclear renaissance has been used in the past, especially in the first decade of this century, and none of those proposed reactor projects ever materialized,” he told The Mix in an email earlier in the week. “The main reason for that failure was the difference between the actual cost of building nuclear reactors when compared to projections by vendors. Today’s cost projections for nuclear reactors are still unrealistically low, and actual construction costs are likely to be much higher than what is advertised.”

In a report released Wednesday, Environmental Defence Canada warned that Ontario’s wider nuclear construction program could cost $117 billion more than renewable energy by 2050, raising power bills by $456 per year for the average household.

“The province is preparing for a significant growth in electricity demand as we electrify homes, cars, and industries,” Programs Director Keith Brooks said in a release that cited a technical analysis [pdf] by consultants at Power Advisory LLC. “Ontario is choosing a very costly, and risky, route even though a renewable energy-focused portfolio could meet our needs at much lower cost.”

“Environmental Defence has largely refrained from weighing in on nuclear,” Brooks added on LinkedIn. “But the amount of nuclear power the province is now contemplating is too big to ignore, and the costs are astronomical….It’s bonkers.”

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