Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.
I go back to taxation. When I look at our property tax assessments and what we did in the early 1990s, we were one of the first communities in Canada to look at what then Chief Manny Jules was doing under section 83 with the amendment to the Indian Act. We looked at it carefully. Taxation, of course, has been a fiery topic for first nations in Canada, but for us as far as property taxation is concerned, it has provided a means to keep the dollars on the reserve. Prior to the 1991-92 timeframe, yes, the Province of British Columbia was collecting taxes on all of the businesses and mobile homes and the early developments, but it was tax money the province collected. It took those moneys off the reserve, it took the moneys and put them into the province of British Columbia, but it did not focus any of those moneys back into our community. Even on things like the general portion of the taxes, that is, the road building and the maintenance of roads and the snow plowing, there was zero, absolutely zero, put back into the community.
So when we looked at property taxation we asked what the benefits were for us. If we took control of the property tax assessments and were able to focus those dollars into services that actually went into the reserve, then we could make a difference, and that's what we focused on. Property taxation is about providing services. It's not about taking a cut of that and handing it out to the members; we don't do that. We focus on taxation as a separate piece of business that's needed for our lands. As I mentioned, we have over $1 billion in investment on our lands on which non-natives pay taxes. The taxes go back into services. Yes, we still have fire protection needs and we have local service agreements with the local and regional districts and the municipalities where part of our moneys go. Those are necessities.
However, we also have moneys that we put right back strictly for road building and sewage lines. You can't do a major shopping centre development without proper sewage, without proper water. That takes a lot of energy and costs a lot, and we budget accordingly.
That's what we see and that's how we went about taxation. It's something that allows us to deal with the future growth of our communities.
Other forms of taxation that we have include our agreements with the government on things like the GST equivalent, the tax on alcohol or tobacco or fuel. That similar GST amount is now the Westbank First Nation's tax component, which we now use to offset the needs of the community.
So things like that have worked for us.