If you're from Alberta or Saskatchewan, you're just not paying enough.
A federal equalization program that includes First Nations
The challenge of reconciliation hinges on a series of fundamental questions: How will Indigenous and settler Canadians live side by side? How are we to understand one another’s cultures and values? How are we going to divide economic and political resources in a way that is fair and justifiable in a modern liberal democracy? These are enormous questions and their resolution requires that we all — individual citizens, corporations, institutions and municipal, provincial and federal governments — take up the challenge in a coherent manner. There is always room for initiative and innovation, but the central challenge of reconciliation — the restructuring of our economic and political order — will require that many of us row in the same direction and toward the same goal.
I want to propose here a vision of what reconciliation and restructuring might look like. We are fortunate in that embedded within our federation are the tools and institutions required to take on the challenge of reconciliation. We have the constitutional, legislative and legal mechanisms. What we need now is the will to act.
The primary challenge of restructuring is not replacing the community infrastructure in such desperate shape in many First Nations communities. Dire though these conditions are, the federal government has been unable to see a path to repairing broken water systems: 75 boil-water advisories remained as of early May 2018. A housing crisis is endemic. The logistical complexities of resolving these infrastructure issues are enormous: training, building and maintenance are all implicated in running water systems and in building houses in hundreds of diverse communities and circumstances.
But there is a way in which if we solve a prior problem, then these infrastructure and logistics problems fall away. I don’t mean that the problems disappear, but the problem of the federal government having to sort out the various community needs and goals begins to disappear.
The fundamental structural challenge is this: First Nations governments do not operate like governments. Governments collect taxes, set and pursue community ends with resources obtained through taxation and pass laws that affect the material economic and social frameworks in which their citizens reside. Band councils do none of these things. First Nations communities survive on the basis of federal transfers and are, via the Indian Act, largely prohibited from raising money through taxation. They are wards of the Crown, operating under a fiscal and social framework overseen by distant administrators. Band council resolutions, meanwhile, offer virtually no scope of change for economic and social relationships. Without the ability to raise money, First Nations communities cannot set and achieve their own ends.
To address this fundamental structural challenge, First Nations need to be able to obtain resources through taxation. In northern stretches of most provinces, First Nations are the majority presence. Beyond their small reservations are vast lands with considerable riches. Currently, these lands and resources fall within provincial jurisdiction. Thus, it is the provinces, in conjunction with industry, that determine what mines get built, which trees are logged, which rivers are to be dammed.
A federal equalization program that includes First Nations
A federal equalization program that includes First Nations
The challenge of reconciliation hinges on a series of fundamental questions: How will Indigenous and settler Canadians live side by side? How are we to understand one another’s cultures and values? How are we going to divide economic and political resources in a way that is fair and justifiable in a modern liberal democracy? These are enormous questions and their resolution requires that we all — individual citizens, corporations, institutions and municipal, provincial and federal governments — take up the challenge in a coherent manner. There is always room for initiative and innovation, but the central challenge of reconciliation — the restructuring of our economic and political order — will require that many of us row in the same direction and toward the same goal.
I want to propose here a vision of what reconciliation and restructuring might look like. We are fortunate in that embedded within our federation are the tools and institutions required to take on the challenge of reconciliation. We have the constitutional, legislative and legal mechanisms. What we need now is the will to act.
The primary challenge of restructuring is not replacing the community infrastructure in such desperate shape in many First Nations communities. Dire though these conditions are, the federal government has been unable to see a path to repairing broken water systems: 75 boil-water advisories remained as of early May 2018. A housing crisis is endemic. The logistical complexities of resolving these infrastructure issues are enormous: training, building and maintenance are all implicated in running water systems and in building houses in hundreds of diverse communities and circumstances.
But there is a way in which if we solve a prior problem, then these infrastructure and logistics problems fall away. I don’t mean that the problems disappear, but the problem of the federal government having to sort out the various community needs and goals begins to disappear.
The fundamental structural challenge is this: First Nations governments do not operate like governments. Governments collect taxes, set and pursue community ends with resources obtained through taxation and pass laws that affect the material economic and social frameworks in which their citizens reside. Band councils do none of these things. First Nations communities survive on the basis of federal transfers and are, via the Indian Act, largely prohibited from raising money through taxation. They are wards of the Crown, operating under a fiscal and social framework overseen by distant administrators. Band council resolutions, meanwhile, offer virtually no scope of change for economic and social relationships. Without the ability to raise money, First Nations communities cannot set and achieve their own ends.
To address this fundamental structural challenge, First Nations need to be able to obtain resources through taxation. In northern stretches of most provinces, First Nations are the majority presence. Beyond their small reservations are vast lands with considerable riches. Currently, these lands and resources fall within provincial jurisdiction. Thus, it is the provinces, in conjunction with industry, that determine what mines get built, which trees are logged, which rivers are to be dammed.
A federal equalization program that includes First Nations
