Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The simple answer is that it makes decision-making easier at the local level. It corresponds with what their hopes and aspirations are. You can have the right of self-determination, but if you don't have the fiscal means to be able to do it, that hampers your vision. What the ins

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Perhaps I could comment. My dad talked about moving at the speed of business, and that means being able to move very quickly. There is one thing that is critically important for parliamentarians to recognize. When we deal with Parliament, from start to finish, on a legislative a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  —it truly means fiscal powers.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It goes back to your earlier question about how we could expand this to include Métis and Inuit. Right now our focus is on first nation communities, but it isn't a stretch to be able to expand that to include other communities, as I mentioned in my presentation. One of the thin

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Could I interject for a second?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We created the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics, which has trained over 150 tax administrators. The reason we created that institution was to transfer our working knowledge as quickly as possible from the institutions to the communities, who are really the implementers of thei

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  A lot of first nations and other Canadians don't recognize or know their history. Taxes were a fundamental part of indigenous culture, going back many millennia. As a matter of fact, our cultures wouldn't have survived on this land without the concept of taxes. Taksis is the Ch

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I think that, when we first started doing our work, it was a question of developing trust, not only with first nations, but ultimately with the federal government that we had the wherewithal to be able to have the knowledge to create legislation out of nothi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Members of the committee, good afternoon. My name is Manny Jules. I am the chief commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission. It is one of the three institutions created by the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, better known as the FMA. I was also chief of my community, t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll quote an old friend of mine, Dennis Saddleman, a poet: I was looking at an old Residential School who became my elder of my memories I was looking at a tall building with four stories stories of hope stories of dreams stories of renewal and stories of tomorrow

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I too have been involved in the First Nations Tax Commission, which is a government council appointee process. It is lengthy and cumbersome, but having an adequate term is critically important, particularly at the outset. This is so you can begin to delve into the complex matters

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I work with the Ngāi Tahu on the South Island of New Zealand. One thing they have accomplished since settling their outstanding treaty obligations is investing a considerable amount of money—their own money—in culture and language. It has helped revitalize the language to the ext

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Of course, we traditionally had laws. That's one of the areas that I'm working on right now. It's the implementation of our law over taksis. We look after each other. We help each other. We are not stingy with each other. We are not jealous of each other. That's a fundamental pr

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much for that question. I spent a lot of time during COVID reflecting on what my elder leaders talked about. They talked about these very issues in the 1910s of the last century, and what they talked about was having a proper land base and access to all of the res

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You come from a province where the premier arbitrarily cancelled a tax-sharing agreement. What I'm proposing is a first nations resource charge so that these dollars cannot be arbitrarily taken away. There has to be a legislative basis to do that. What I propose is that first nat