Honourable senators, good morning. My name is Manny Jules, and I’m the Chief Commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission, one of the three institutions created by the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, better known as the FMA. I was also Chief of the Kamloops Indian Band from 1984 to 2000. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee to speak in support of Bill C-45.

Canadian history has shown that practical proposals to increase our self-determination and implement economic reconciliation move slowly unless we design and lead the changes. The proposals are optional, and First Nation institutions support their implementation. I know this firsthand, as I have spent most of my adult life working on proposals to renew the fiscal means for our self-determination.

This includes 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 2005. In each case, I worked to ensure that we had all-party support in the Senate and the House of Commons.

In February 2005, I appeared before this committee in support of the original FMA. I said that we are seeking to build an institutional framework for First Nation governments that will allow First Nations to assume powers as they develop capacity, create investor certainty and build infrastructure. Most importantly, I said this framework has been developed by First Nations who participated in it. This is our legislation.

Looking back, I think it is fair to say that by any measure, we have succeeded. 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 most importantly, with the success of the FMA, we have created a formula to speed up the process of self-determination and economic reconciliation, passed federal legislation to open jurisdictional space for interested First Nations and occupied that space with our own laws to fully respect our right of self-determination. For those First Nations that choose to opt in, they will be supported by 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 FMA First Nations: We need our own infrastructure institution, we need to expand our fiscal powers, we need to take control of our fiscal information and we need to expand our capacity support within the Tulo Centre for Indigenous Economics.

I should note that these amendments reflect what the FMA institutions told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs in 2022 as part of their study on Barriers to Indigenous Economic Development. There 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 now using this act. We know that with these improvements, that 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, finding a place for First Nation governments within the federation and the economy. Our work will continue down that legislative path; for example, on the development of a First Nations resource charge to ensure we benefit from resource revenues derived from our lands and the creation of a First Nations assessment authority, which will provide an accessible and reliable institution for the valuation of First Nation lands.

All-party support for Bill C-45 will demonstrate Canada’s commitment to our self-determination and economic reconciliation. I believe that the legislation is a continuation of the work my father 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 Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier in 1910: By working together, we can make each other great and good. Thank you.

Just for the record, we work with over 50% of all of the First Nation communities in Manitoba. We’ve worked on setting up a template for municipal First Nations service agreements with the Kapyong Barracks land. That sets a precedent not only in the Province of Manitoba, but nationally. We have protocol agreements with the southern chiefs and with a lot of the Treaty 2 chiefs as well. We do extensive work right across the country.

One of the things I was telling the senator as part of her question was how we arrived at this state. In 1927 — and all of us are familiar with the name of Duncan Campbell Scott, he was the inventor of residential schools, but he was also instrumental in taking away our fiscal powers. You’re senators, you hear many hearings. He was granted 15 hours of presentations to the House of Commons. My ancestors were allowed 15 minutes. In the course of deliberation, they took away two things: Our fiscal powers, which meant we could no longer raise money on our own, that we had to be forever dependent on the federal government; and, we couldn’t deal with the land question in British Columbia. We were on the verge of resolving that issue in the 1910s and the 1920s, and until that happened — and the first time we started to move away from the dependency model was the legislation I headed up in 1988. For the first time, it gave us the ability to be able to raise money on our own, not from ourselves but from those who do business with us.

When we talk about economic reconciliation, that is fundamental to how we are able to move forward independent of government. Until we move beyond rhetoric, we will always be stuck in that process.

I have been involved in constitutional discussions right from the very beginning, as a council member and as a chief. Some of those discussions happened in this very complex, so I know full well the debate around section 35 of the Canadian Constitution Act. Is it a full box; is it an empty box? From my perspective, we have a full box, but the dilemma is how to get to resolving those issues. Because you still have to deal with the reality of the Canadian state, which is, in my view, indefeasible. You have to deal with both the federal and provincial governments.

We have uncovered a process from our community’s perspective to deal with that, and that’s getting the federal government to pass enabling legislation so that our First Nations would be able to occupy that space of jurisdiction. We use that to deal with the provincial governments to get them out of the way so that we will fully occupy that jurisdictional space. That’s our way that we have chosen, and that’s why this legislation is optional.

One of the things also critically important about the legislation is there is a non-derogation clause that doesn’t affect treaty or self-government agreements. One of the reasons we want the legislation expanded is so we can provide services like the British Columbia Health Authority as an example, so that we’re not going to just build one health facility but 20. Those are the discussions we’re having in B.C. We’re not going to build one water system for the Mi’kmaq; we’re going to be building 25. It expands the rate at which we can deal with the $300 million infrastructure gap. We’re going to try to do our bit. It doesn’t solve all of the problems, but without institutional support and centres of excellence, we won’t be able to have the standards or the training for individuals operating these facilities 24-7, 365 days a year.

Firstly, we help create our own First Nations infrastructure, our finance authority, so that’s one option available for First Nations. But it doesn’t preclude First Nations from working with the infrastructure bank. It’s going to be their choice. I think that with the work that needs to be done, we need to be able to work with all financial institutions, and that’s going to be at the local First Nations level to make that choice.

We’re open, hopefully, after the legislation is passed. We want it to be able to come into force as quickly as possible so we can get into business and provide direct services for First Nations.

That doesn’t preclude us from working with all the financial institutions, but our primary focus here is with the operation that Ernie Daniels heads up, which is the finance authority. Again, when the Canada Infrastructure Bank is looking at setting aside about $3 billion, you have to be able to take advantage of that also.

Also, I think for the first time, we’re going to be able to have true public-private partnerships with First Nations to build infrastructure in our communities. The irony of ironies that I always like to point out is that the only public-private partnership is in British Columbia, and that was to build a provincial jail. We want to move beyond building jails, senator.

I didn’t want to let this day pass without recognizing the sacrifices our veterans made on this day many years ago. I had my uncle fight in North Africa, up the boot of Italy, into France and then in Germany, and the fighting by our veterans in the First and Second World Wars, which opened up the discussions we’re having today. Thank you for this opportunity.