44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 1, 2023
- 03:43:42 p.m.
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Members of the committee, good afternoon.
My name is Manny Jules. I am the chief commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission. It is one of the three institutions created by the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, better known as the FMA. I was also chief of my community, the Kamloops Indian Band, from the years 1984 to 2000.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before this committee and to speak in support of Bill C-45.
Canadian history has shown that practical proposals to increase our self-determination and to implement economic reconciliation move slowly unless we design and lead the changes.
The proposals are optional. First nation institutions support their implementation. I know this first-hand, as I've spent most of my adult life working on proposals to renew the fiscal means for our self-determination. These include the Kamloops amendment to the Indian Act in 1988, which gave first nations the ability to generate wealth from lands leased on designated lands; the creation of the First Nations Gazette in 1997, which supports the legal voice of first nations; the first nations sales tax in 1998; and the passage of the FMA in the year 2005. In each case, I worked to ensure that we had all-party support.
Twenty years ago, in June of 2003, I appeared before this committee in support of the original FMA. I spoke about how the FMA gave us hope for a better future by giving us more fiscal powers, by supporting faster implementation of our jurisdictions and by raising our credit rating. Since that time, I am proud to say we have turned that hope into trust, and we have delivered on that promise.
The FMA first nations have realized billions of dollars in investment, and the assessed value of reserve lands now exceeds $15 billion. Thousands of FMA laws have been passed, and 150 first nation administrators have graduated from the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics.
Perhaps more importantly, with the success of the FMA, we have created a formula to speed up the process of self-determination and of economic reconciliation: pass federal legislation to open up the jurisdictional space for interested first nations; occupy that space with our own laws, if first nations are interested, to fully respect their right to self-determination; and support first nations who opt in with first nation institutions, standards and accredited training to increase the benefits.
Bill C-45 is the next step in this process, and it reflects what we have heard from the FMA first nations. We need our own infrastructure institute. We need to expand our fiscal powers. We need to take control of our fiscal information, and we need to expand our capacity to support within the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics.
These amendments reflect what the FMA institutions told this committee in 2022 as part of your study on barriers to economic development. They were also recommendations in the committee's report to the House of Commons.
The FMA is the most successful first nation-led legislation in Canadian history, with more than half of all first nations using this act. We now know that with these improvements the number is only going to grow. We have moved beyond simply recognizing first nation rights to implementing first nation jurisdiction.
Working together, with the support of all parties in Parliament, the FMA institutions and first nations have provided an optional legislative path to complete one part of the unfinished business of Canada: to find a place for first nation governments in the federation and in the economy.
Our work will continue down that legislative path, for example with the development of a first nations resource charge to ensure we benefit from resource revenues derived from our lands. Another example would be the creation of a first nations assessment authority, which would provide an accessible and reliable institution for the valuation of first nation lands.
All-party support for these amendments will demonstrate Canada's commitment to our self-determination and to economic reconciliation.
I believe that the legislation is the continuation of what my father, Chief Clarence Jules, started in 1965. His words then still resonate today: We must be able to move at the speed of business.
Your support for these amendments demonstrates that my ancestors were right when they wrote in a letter to the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in 1910, that by working together we can make each other “great and good”.
Thank you very much.
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- 04:18:19 p.m.
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Thank you very much.
I think that, when we first started doing our work, it was a question of developing trust, not only with first nations, but ultimately with the federal government that we had the wherewithal to be able to have the knowledge to create legislation out of nothing.
When I first started doing this work in the 1980s, it was thought that the taxation amendments only applied to a small number of communities, and through the second phase—I would call it—in 2005, we had to develop trust amongst first nations right across the country. This led to a heated debate at the Assembly of First Nations conference, and we've overcome those debates internally with first nations.
Now we are ready to expand the catch, if you will, to include Inuit and Métis, and those are critically important for the future, because it's my belief that, without all indigenous people working together, none of us will be free of colonialism.
When I think about the Métis in particular, there's one individual who worked for me a while ago, Garry Ladouceur. He was instrumental in creating the Metis Settlements Act in Alberta, and that's one particular piece of work that we monitor as a tax commission, because what happens in those communities has an impact on first nation communities.
Also, in embracing the Métis, we're embracing the history of this country in all of its complexity. When you look to the far north and the Inuit, there are a lot of issues that I feel we could have been involved in such as the jet fuel contamination of the water systems and the like.
In my meeting with you, Lori, we talked about the names and thought about our common history of being notified that your name is now a number. As I told you at that meeting, my number is 6880032401.
There's a lot in common that we have to overcome collectively as indigenous people in this country, and what that brings us is the strength to be able to overcome all of the hurdles that are going to face us in the future. Indeed, when we start to deal with those areas, it means that our place in this country and in this federation will be strengthened.
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- 04:24:33 p.m.
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A lot of first nations and other Canadians don't recognize or know their history. Taxes were a fundamental part of indigenous culture, going back many millennia. As a matter of fact, our cultures wouldn't have survived on this land without the concept of taxes.
Taksis is the Chinook spelling of “taxation”. It's a concept we understood, a concept we practised and a concept that will now be enshrined in Canadian legislation, if this particular piece of legislation is passed—Bill C-45. It was a Chinook trade language spoken in the Pacific northwest, from Alaska to northern California. It is a very important concept because it educates our people. We had these concepts that were part of our cultural milieu. It also signifies to Canada that taxation is something we're not afraid of dealing with.
Taxation is a fundamental governmental power that has its roots in the Matsqui court decision. It's one of the very first court decisions I was involved in, going to the Supreme Court of Canada. When you talk about fundamental governmental power, everybody just refers to taxation in its spelling as it is now.
When we introduce the concept of taksis, it's going to fundamentally change how we view taxation in this country, and in particular how my people—how Secwépemc and indigenous people across the country—think about taxation. It isn't a foreign concept. These are concepts we had as part of our world view. It's how we financed our infrastructure, how we financed our culture and how we financed international trade among the indigenous populations of the Americas.
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- 04:29:32 p.m.
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Could I interject for a second?
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- 04:29:32 p.m.
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We created the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics, which has trained over 150 tax administrators. The reason we created that institution was to transfer our working knowledge as quickly as possible from the institutions to the communities, who are really the implementers of their own jurisdiction. A lot of them are very small communities. By working together with standardized rules and regulations, it makes it easier for communities across the country to work together.
As a matter of fact, this week in my home community we have administrators meeting now to be certified. We're creating ultimately a doctoral program with Thompson Rivers University and are reaching out and working with the University of Canterbury on South Island in New Zealand.
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- 04:34:54 p.m.
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It goes back to your earlier question about how we could expand this to include Métis and Inuit.
Right now our focus is on first nation communities, but it isn't a stretch to be able to expand that to include other communities, as I mentioned in my presentation.
One of the things you asked for is enforcement. That's a big issue for all of our institutions that are operating, not only the FMA but also the Lands Advisory Board. This issue came to the forefront during the early days of COVID, when first nations wanted to exert their jurisdiction to isolate themselves and they found that they didn't have the jurisdiction to be able to do that because of limitations either as a band council or as a community.
One of the things we started to look at a long time ago, and it's of particular interest to all of us, is the court of competent jurisdiction to deal with first nation issues. That's critically important as we begin to move forward.
You would naturally think that the Federal Court would be the court we would, obviously, be looking towards, but I started to look at that and the complexity in terms of the amendments that are required, and it takes more than just one institution to be able to deal with it. When you look at the provincial courts, they're limited. A lot of their precedents are either municipal or outside of the first nations or indigenous purview.
Ultimately, we have to study the issue of enforcement. When you look at the populations of indigenous people in the prisons, it's obvious that you have to take economic reconciliation seriously. The root causes of those are all social policy issues. The federal government, for many years, has looked at us simply as a social policy issue and that has to change fundamentally.
When we talk about economic reconciliation—
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- 04:37:25 p.m.
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—it truly means fiscal powers.
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- 04:40:01 p.m.
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Perhaps I could comment.
My dad talked about moving at the speed of business, and that means being able to move very quickly. There is one thing that is critically important for parliamentarians to recognize. When we deal with Parliament, from start to finish, on a legislative agenda.... In 2016, we first introduced the concept of the infrastructure institute, and it has taken us seven years to get to this stage. If we're truly going to move on an economic reconciliation agenda, that process has to speed up considerably.
When we deal with changes that are necessary for the operation of our institutions, there are going to be areas where we're going to need legislative change in the future. We would ask parliamentarians and, in particular, this committee to be cognizant of that, to work with us, because we have the track record. Dealing with first nation communities, we've built up a lot of trust. We know that we can deliver, but we have to be able to speed up any legislative initiatives as required—and there are going to be many. I mentioned a couple of them during my presentation.
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- 04:49:10 p.m.
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The simple answer is that it makes decision-making easier at the local level. It corresponds with what their hopes and aspirations are. You can have the right of self-determination, but if you don't have the fiscal means to be able to do it, that hampers your vision. What the institutions do is make it easier to make that leap. It isn't just a leap of faith anymore. We've created the institutional support to be able to do that.
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- 04:51:12 p.m.
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I learned a lot from my dad. I was mentored by him. When I was about 11 years old, he was chief of my community, and I wondered what he did that was so important that people would want to visit him and talk to him about it.
It was because of his vision that he created Mount Paul Industrial Park, which is still our economic engine in our community. It was at that time, during the 1968 consultations to amend the Indian Act, when he coined the phrase “move at the speed of business”.
He said that we had to sometimes wait two years to get a lease done in Ottawa. We wanted to be able to have the lease, but somebody in Ottawa says, “No, you can't have the land.” He said that's why we have to be able to have this local decision-making. The monies that are raised in our community should stay within our community. Even to this day, for every dollar we raise in terms of taxation, the federal and provincial governments get seven.
Those ultimately mean that the system has to change and that we have to be able to move at the speed of business, because if we don't, that opportunity is gone. As one other chief told me a long time ago, opportunity knocks softly.
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- 05:01:23 p.m.
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To add, we had, as Jason was saying, about 50°C temperatures. My uncle's family had their entire homes all burnt down in Lytton. When we start talking about the infrastructure institute, that's going to mean that we're going to have to adapt. We're going to have to have fire-hardened communities. In the last couple of years, since my community was just about evacuated, we've had six fires within our reserve lands.
None of the provincial fire folks could come on to the reserve because they were busy fighting other fires. Capacity development is going to be important so that we will have fire-ready institutions to help them. Some of the communities in the interior, as a result of the atmospheric rain, were just about completely flooded out, losing most of their land. They have little bits of land left. We're going to be able to play an important role in helping rebuild communities, helping them prepare for climate change as it happens and develop because we'll have our own institutional capacity to develop new strategies that are first nations'.
One of the things that I've been saying quite a bit lately is that the world needs indigenous knowledge now.
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- 05:05:10 p.m.
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What we wanted to be able to do through these particular amendments, which also set the stage for other institutional development into the future, is to clarify that first nations do have the jurisdiction of enforcement and are able to follow, in our case, tax arrears off reserve lands. It's a very complex area of enforcement. It's one that this bill helps to bring clarity to, but much work needs to be done in this area because it isn't just us and the FMA. It also impacts the first nations lands management and, indeed, even to the extent where it's difficult for provincial governments to move child care from provincial jurisdiction to first nation jurisdiction with some other legislation that was passed. It's a multi-faceted area.
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- 05:15:47 p.m.
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I will put in my two bits.
One of the concepts that I've been advocating for, and it's something that's been percolating under this thinking cap for quite a while, is a first nations resource charge. Canada is at a crossroads. It needs all kinds of metals to be able to function in today's marketplace. It needs critical minerals. Joe Biden was up recently to talk about critical minerals.
What's hindering that is first nations jurisdiction. We need to recognize first nations jurisdiction so that they can partake in resource development and extraction in a way that hasn't happened in the past. In order to do that, first nations have to be part and parcel of the deal with the environmental issues, and also be able to benefit from those developments. Right now that isn't happening. We see that happening over and over again with any resource development. The money either comes here to Ottawa, or it goes to Victoria or Fredericton or some other place around the world.
If we don't have the jurisdiction, and if we don't benefit from the resource development in this country, we won't be able to ever catch up to the infrastructure backlog. In order for this to happen, we need to be able to have a clear signal from the federal government that it's prepared to cede federal tax room to first nations. At the same time, the provincial governments have to do likewise.
If that doesn't happen, we're not going to be able to have food security and energy security in this country in our lifetimes. First nations are now at the forefront of those struggles, because it's the land that we're trying to take care of.
It's even about water rights. One of the issues that I've been dealing with in the Prairies is the flooding situation that this young lady was talking about earlier on. You have a situation where the Red River flows north. Where does it flood? It bypasses Winnipeg and all the other communities. It floods the first nation communities. When you talk about hydro development, who does it impact more than anybody else in this country but first nations?
First nations have to be an integral part of energy strategies. The federal government has to be cognizant of the fact that there isn't going to be any resource development without first nations being intimately involved.
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- 05:19:39 p.m.
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Absolutely. All of the parliamentarians would answer our prayers and answer the prayers of the communities that we work with and serve. We want this legislation to be passed as quickly as possible so that we can get on to the taksis but also the task of building new and better infrastructure. Let us do the work. You pass the legislation as quickly as possible—and unanimously, because it is our belief that this should happen with all-party support in the interests of this country.
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