Thank you, Jaime.
My name is David Paul. I'm from the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. I'm also deputy chief commissioner for the First Nations Tax Commission.
In 1993 I negotiated, on behalf of my community, the Tobique First Nation, the first tax agreement, which was the New Brunswick tax agreement that was recently cancelled by our current government. Under the changes that came about, thousands of people were employed, millions of dollars were generated, and own-source revenue, which was non-existent prior to that, became something. It gave us the ability to address shortages or deficiencies within our communities in areas that were not covered by government programs.
With this missing, it speaks to the problem that was mentioned by the other presenters: the need for legislation. The agreement was simply that in New Brunswick. Mind you, it held for 30 years, but it was an agreement. It could be cancelled or torn up by either party within 30 to 90 days, depending on who signed and when.
Before the moratorium was put in place, all seven of those communities began to experience own-source revenue, something that had been foreign to them in the past. They had been thoroughly and 100% dependent upon handouts from government, through government programs.
What we saw here was that, where these were controlled by our communities and accountable to our communities, that's where we saw significant change. Businesses were created. Mind you, 80¢ of every dollar leaves our communities within 24 hours. We don't have huge manufacturing. We're not involved with supplying commodities. The level of entry into the Canadian economy has been simple—a gas station, a convenience store, small businesses. This is what results from the jurisdiction or when given tax room.
Again, I speak to the importance of this being in the form of legislation and not agreements.
In order for us to experience what all Canadians enjoy, we need every facet of the tax room given to us to provide the opportunity for us to explore that so that we can generate our own-source revenue. We've been very good, over decades, at managing poverty. We became expert at it. We want to be experts at business and at managing our own governments, but until we have the jurisdiction, until we have the tax room and the legislation, the current status quo will continue, except for those who are involved with the other institutions we have in place in Canada.
Now, mind you, we have over 174 taxing first nations. That number could be larger. We have hundreds that are involved with other aspects of our other institutions. However, you can see, if you look at every community that has been involved with the institutions, that they've met with success. They have OSR, own-source revenues, to deal with deficiencies. As I said, if our jurisdiction is expanded and we are afforded every tool in the tax tool box, eventually we won't need any programs.