Thank you. I will start with a brief overview.
My name is Garima Dwivedi, and I'm from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. I'm the director general of indigenous institutions and governance modernization.
I'm joined today by my colleagues, Leane Walsh and Jeffrey Clark, and I'm joining you from the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
I'm pleased to be able to speak to you on the proposed amendment to the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, which, if enacted, would expand the types of revenues that first nations can use to support borrowing from the First Nations Finance Authority.
Since 2006, the First Nations Fiscal Management Act has enabled first nations that voluntarily opt in to exercise jurisdiction over fiscal matters such as financial management, property taxation and local revenue generation. The act also provides first nations with access to long-term financing at preferred rates through the issuance of bonds on capital markets, allowing them to leverage their own sources of revenue to access capital for infrastructure and for socio-economic development, through which over $1.3 billion has been raised.
The First Nations Fiscal Management Act is led by first nations with more than 300 first nations across Canada benefiting from the fiscal services offered by the regime's three first nations-led institutions: the First Nations Finance Authority, the First Nations Financial Management Board and the First Nations Tax Commission.
The amendment being proposed is one that the First Nations Fiscal Management Act institutions and their members have wanted for some time now. Currently, first nations cannot use the first nations goods and services tax, FNGST, or the first nations sales tax, FNST, as a revenue source for pooled borrowing through the First Nations Finance Authority, because section 67 of the Financial Administration Act prohibits the assignment of Crown debt. It had been considered that borrowing revenues from the first nations goods and services tax and the first nations sales tax would likely constitute an assignment of Crown debt. The proposed amendment would remove this impediment. The wording of this new provision, including the subsection stating that it's not binding on the Crown, is consistent with similar provisions in other federal legislation that make exceptions to section 67 of the Financial Administration Act.
If this amendment is enacted, the related regulations, financing secured by other revenues regulations, would also be amended.
The proposed change would remove the obstacle first nations have had and enable them to use, should they choose, the first nations goods and services tax or the first nations sales tax as a source of revenue to secure long-term financing through the First Nations Finance Authority.
Thank you.