Jason Rasevych

Jason Rasevych is a Partner at Deloitte Canada within the Financial Advisory Practice and National Leader Indigenous Client Services. Jason also leads Deloitte’s Indigenous Trust service line which supports First Nations and Trustees to manage over $500 million in invested funds, and supports the growth, education and development of First Nations and its members.

Jason is an Anishnawbe from Ginoogaming First Nation, a Treaty #9 signatory in Northwestern Ontario. Jason has over 20 years of marketing, finance, strategy, governance, economic development, and management experience with various First Nations across Canada.  He is recognized as one of Canada’s top economic developers and has secured more than $250 million for capital projects, legacy infrastructure, and business expansion with Indigenous groups.

Jason has deep knowledge of First Nation rights and the natural resource sector through his involvement in complex negotiations between First Nations, industry, and governments.  This journey of promoting social license and consent of Indigenous peoples has led to precedent setting agreements in the mining, forestry and energy sectors resulting in Indigenous equity in projects and ownership of enabling infrastructure.  Jason has been responsible for directing the long-term strategy of organizations through policy development and planning, reviewing and evaluating the organizations performance, and participating on the finance and loan committees resulting in investment and increased participation of Indigenous-owned businesses in supply chains.

He is the leading mind behind many special projects including the largest infrastructure investment in Ontario’s history with $69 million to extend broadband fibre optics to five remote First Nations.  The First Nations-led broadband initative enabled the five First Nations to work together to design a next-generation fibre to the home network which will be owned and operated by the First Nations themselves.   Jason also led negotiations with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry for a historic agreement that helped a group of First Nations to takeover the forest tenure in their traditional lands by assuming management responsibilities of a crown Forest and forestry road network which led to equity options in a regional lumber mill, priority employment and apprenticeships and over $200 million in value of first-right business contracting opportunities for the surrounding First Nations. 

In 2015, Jason was invited to Guatemala to provide advocacy strategies to remote Indigenous Mayan tribes from Central and Latin America. This revived his lifelong passion to promote government and corporate adoption of the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Free Prior Informed Consent Principles (FPIC).  Jason has served on the boards of several Indigenous organizations and professional and non-profit associations and has also completed similar work currently offered by the Deloitte Indigenous practice.  Most notably he was appointed to Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Regional Economic Strategic Planning Committee, the Oshki-WenJack Business Advisory Committee, and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) task force for natural resource development.

In 2019 he co-founded the Anishnawbe Business Professional Association to advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous business in pursuit of economic reconciliation of Indigenous peoples in Canada.