Finance committee  Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself.... The Indian Act in Canada was passed in 1876. The quote I read f

Finance committee  What I've been doing for the last four years, really, is developing the concept, making sure that there's an economic rationale and that the legal arguments to support and underpin the legislation are there. All of that work is now done and is before the Department of Indian Affa

Finance committee  Basically the way I approach an issue is that the work has to be methodically done. The concepts have to be thoroughly thought through and all of the rationale clearly put forward. As I mentioned, the legal opinion that we had drafted is now before the Department of Justice. They

Finance committee  Not specifically with Pembina, but I've been working with other first nations groups that have been pursuing wind energy right across the country--in Quebec on the north shore, in British Columbia, and down east.

Finance committee  If the suggestion is that an entire reserve could be sold off, I think that would be highly unlikely. When you consider the size of Canada, Canada hasn't all been developed and neither have any of the provinces. So what we need in terms of first nation governments is the abilit

Finance committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  In this particular case, it's in my own home community of Kamloops. There was a 15-year build-out with a 99-year lease. That's the subject property I was referring to.

Finance committee  You know, one of the things that Canadians hold dear to their hearts is individual private property. There's no way we want to jeopardize that. As a matter of fact, we are establishing, through an agreement I have with Thompson Rivers University, various training programs throu

Finance committee  First and foremost, this would have to take place with a vote of the entire community in favour of opting out of the Indian Act. Right now the title is vested in Her Majesty, and therefore the federal government owns Indian reserves. So the land would actually be transferred to t

Finance committee  Let me give you the example of Nisga'a. Nisga'a is the only first nation in the country that has this ability right now. They're going forward with a vote to privatize individual holdings at the end of October, on October 30. It comprises less than one two-thousandths of the enti

Finance committee  Exactly, yes, that's right.

Finance committee  Thank you. Good morning. My name is Manny Jules. I am the chief commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to speak on income distribution and disparities in Canada. While I'm here to provide a first nations perspective, it

Finance committee  Ms. Nash was talking about generational poverty. First nations have had it ever since the introduction of the Indian Act. The federal government owns all Indian reserves, so we don't have the same rights as anyone else in the country. It's only mentally handicapped individuals, m

Finance committee  It's true with any change. There were concerns in the 1950s that we would become citizens of Canada. There were concerns in the 1980s that we shouldn't be part of the constitutional process. We saw it recently with the Idle No More movement, that there shouldn't be any changes or

Finance committee  It's one of the two fundamental pillars of a sound economy. If you don't have a real property tax system, which is really by most standards the most accountable form of taxation, and a property regime—those are the two pillars—you can't provide infrastructure as a government; you