Juno News - November 27, 2021Is self-government the answer to the Canada-Indigenous relationship？
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Summary
Coming up, we do a deep dive into Canada s relationship with its Indigenous citizens and its Indigenous communities. What are the problems and, more importantly, what are the solutions? The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, we do a deep dive into Canada's relationship with its Indigenous peoples and its Indigenous communities.
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What are the problems, and more importantly, what are the solutions?
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This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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It's the Friday show, which means we do things a little bit differently.
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Rather than delving into the news of the day, which this past week has been rather depressing,
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we take a big issue and do a deep dive into it, not necessarily trying to solve all the problems of the world,
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but certainly trying to give it the attention and insight it very much needs.
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And the issue I want to talk about today is the relationship that Canada has with its Indigenous citizens and its Indigenous communities.
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Every election this comes up, between elections this comes up.
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We have stories about energy projects being met with Indigenous or purportedly Indigenous protesters.
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We have the announcements of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools.
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We had Justin Trudeau lowering the Canadian flag.
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We have all of these things, but are we anywhere close to finding a solution to these challenges?
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We have two fantastic guests here to discuss this.
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Melissa Embarkey is an Indigenous woman herself, a policy analyst and outreach coordinator at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute,
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and also a woman with over 14 years of experience in Canada's oil and gas sector.
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Also, we have Dr. Heather Exner-Perot, a fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute,
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and a researcher who's done a number of work in political science,
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but also specifically looking at Indigenous issues, Northern issues, and Indigenous economic development.
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Heather, Melissa, thank you both so much. It's good to have you here.
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When we talk about these issues between Indigenous communities and Canada,
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or the Canadian government specifically, is it clear what we're even talking about here?
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I know that there tends to be this view of Indigenous people as one homogenous group,
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There are issues in the north, issues in the west, issues in my part of the country, in southern Ontario,
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clean drinking water, energy projects, resistance to energy projects.
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So what are we really talking about here as being the problem or problems?
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That's true. I mean, the concerns that you would have in Saskatchewan where I grew up
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aren't going to be the same concerns that you have in British Columbia, for example.
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So we have to really parse out what the issue is.
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We need to kind of know, you know, what's in conflict, you know, what are these communities
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And I think we really have to start at the grassroots level.
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Like, is this an issue within the community that doesn't necessarily deal with, you know,
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And a lot of the times what you're going to see is that it's actually issues within the communities themselves.
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And, you know, and it kind of pours out into the public as an opposition to something which isn't true.
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So let me just drill down into that a little bit further if I can here, because when we are talking
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about experiences or frustrations that Indigenous Canadians hold that require political solutions
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in some way, we'll narrow it down a little bit there.
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How many of these issues are really just general concerns that impact all Canadians in the same
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way that, you know, affordability, taxes and regulations do versus concerns that are very
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Well, what we can see and what I've been seeing in the last little while is, you know, when
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you have an, take for example, under Bill C-15, this directly impacted Indigenous communities
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Whereas if I'm looking, you know, broader and more general, when you look at urban areas,
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that's not going to be an issue, you know, so we have to look at the bills and who they
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impact and how they impact them, because it could impact us differently than it would a
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Canadian, you know, a taxpayer in an urban area.
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So even with water, we have to look at, you know, different facets of it, you know, we have to look
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at it from a municipality level, from a reserve perspective, and even right down to, you know,
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you know, can we access water from other sources?
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So we're intertwined in a lot of ways, but bills and legislation that goes through is often very
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And we need to kind of look at that from, like, from an internal reserve, you know, perspective.
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Whereas, you know, from your perspective, it might not be an issue, but for us, it would be pretty big.
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How did you, Heather, get so tied in with Indigenous issues in the first place?
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And I think growing up in Saskatchewan in the 90s, we didn't talk about treaties.
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I went through university in a social sciences degree and had almost no Indigenous content at
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So it was actually when I did my master's, I did it.
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I liked, you know, international development was a big thing.
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And I did it in Southern Chile with the Weiche and the Mapuche people.
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And then when I came back to Canada, it was like, oh, we have a lot of these same Indigenous
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So I just started working on that, started working on some Arctic things, which is, you
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And then did start doing more Northern and Indigenous development.
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And that's how I got involved with Saskatchewan Indigenous Economic Development Network.
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And I guess my PhD is in political science, but, you know, and Melissa knows this, too.
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When you start to think about all the problems, water, poverty, education, housing, things
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like that, health, mental health, addictions, trauma, the solution is often found in economic
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development, having jobs, having resources, having opportunities so that the community can
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solve these issues themselves and not have to rely on the federal government.
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So I think you touched on a very important part of the discussion here when you bring
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up economic development, because I've read a lot of frustrations in particular from Indigenous
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folks in Canada about what seem like very symbolic responses.
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And that could be the flag being lowered, the Canadian flag being lowered for several months,
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statues coming down, commemorations around residential schools.
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And it's not to say that there's anything bad or disqualifying about doing any of these
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issues. But if you're not accompanying it with anything that's solving these underlying
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So why is economic development, in your view, the road to solving a lot of those concerns
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that you just laid out there that are very distinct?
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From my perspective, self-determination is maybe the most important human and community right.
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That's the fundamental Western, liberal, Indigenous kind of value.
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And in the last 30, 40 years, First Nations peoples, Métis peoples, Inuit people have
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made great strides in political self-determination, getting kind of de jure, legal, more control,
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But that has not been paired with economic self-determination.
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So when you still rely on the federal government for 80 or 90% of your revenues, it's very hard
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It's very hard to make your own decisions and you still have to go and get permission
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for the minister and the Indian Act to do any of those things or get funding if you want
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So for me, having that, the independence that comes from having your own sources of revenues
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and not relying on another level of government, which is often antagonistic, is the best way
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for First Nations to have self-determination and therefore make their own decisions, which we
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know in governance and political science theory are going to be better decisions than other
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We know, Melissa, there are some very wealthy communities, especially out west, that can
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rely very heavily on natural resource development.
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There are also communities that don't have that to lean on.
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Some communities in the far north that don't have necessarily oil resources and southern
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So is that idea of being able to develop economically something that can be more evenly attained or
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is it very limited to just that kind of one part of the country, the west?
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Well, I definitely think, you know, sovereignty is the key in this because each community knows
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how they can move forward and better their community.
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Mine, for example, like we don't have access to natural resources, but where we've invested
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is in bringing our child and family services back to my community.
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So we've worked with provincial and federal government to do this.
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And in addition to this, you know, we're opening a treatment center, we're opening a family
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So we're doing things, you know, that will bring jobs to our community.
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Not a whole lot of jobs that a natural resource sector would bring, but they are jobs, long-term
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So we have to listen to First Nations communities and what they want.
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You know, we can't be telling them you need to do this, this, and this, because each area
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Some are more north, some are south, some are in areas, you know, but next to urban areas
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So they have a better chance of being economically independent, whereas some reserves don't.
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And this is where listening to the communities matter, because what they want and what they
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So that's why it is important to listen to the elected chief and councils and what they
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I'd like to talk in a bit of detail with you both about what it is that Indigenous communities
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And I realized that this could change from community to community.
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And I mean, growing up, and this could be coming from a place of ignorance, the primary
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concern that I was exposed to involved land claims.
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We had a couple of very high-profile cases about land claims and about land development
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and these sorts of community projects that were encroaching on territory that was in dispute.
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How central are the land claim issues still in 2021 to a lot of the concerns?
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Oh, there's a lot of concerns with land claims, because if anything, they take decades to resolve.
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Like, this isn't a process that's going to happen tomorrow.
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So I think what the government needs to do is they need to eliminate some of that red tape
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in between, you know, and they need to start working with First Nations on where their land
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You know, otherwise we're going to continue seeing protests.
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We're going to continue seeing, you know, delays in everything.
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So I think what we need to do is definitely start working on those TLE land claims in Saskatchewan,
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get them finalized, you know, work on Ontario, get those finalized.
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Let's get those out of the way first so that First Nations can thrive and succeed.
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And you touched on something there that I imagine is just a massive, massive undertaking.
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And I don't know, politically in Canada, and I'll go to you on this, Heather, is that even
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possible within, you know, one, two, or three terms of a government to resolve this?
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I think people need to know, like, a land claim in the north is not the same as land claim
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in Saskatchewan is not the same as a land claim in BC, because the history and the governance
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and the agreements were all made at different times and on different things.
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And so in BC, where, you know, there was no treaty is a very different situation from
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Saskatchewan, where it was just not enough was given, you know, in what was promised
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And in the north, again, it's kind of a whole different cattle of fish.
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The other thing is that there's two parties to this.
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And so maybe a federal government would like to settle something in BC, but the community
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is not ready to come to an agreement or hasn't had the time to do their due diligence
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or doesn't have the capacity to do their due diligence in the settlement either.
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And sometimes maybe it's the federal government that's dragging their heels.
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So it's not, you know, there are different circumstances with different communities
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I think if you're interested in economic development and resource development, knowing who gets
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to make the final decision, who's the decision maker, who can enter agreements under what
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Obviously, we're seeing that now with wet swim territory where there's, you know, confusion
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And you don't have quite the same problem in the north.
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There are some competing claims, but to a lesser extent, or in the treaty areas, you know,
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So just having that certainty of knowing who gets to make the decisions and how their impacts,
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I think that people don't appreciate, I'm sure Melissa would agree, most indigenous people
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So if you're going to have development in their territory, not consult, not avoid sacred sites,
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not involve people and the economic benefits that comes from it, yes, that's going to be
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But if you have settled land claims, the community is involved, the nation's involved, they've
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agreed to a set of terms, they've agreed to the benefits, they have time prepared to benefit,
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Almost, you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of mining agreements, forestry agreements,
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So just having the certainty for the developer, for the nation, for all levels of government
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over whose land it is, who has title is so important.
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I think it was early last year with Tech Frontier withdrawing from its project or Tech
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And one of the big concerns was a lot of the uncertainty surrounding indigenous communities
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and pushback they were nervous about from protests.
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And when you hear stories like that, Melissa, what's your take on it?
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Because you've obviously been connected to indigenous people that really want these projects,
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yet at the same time, for a lot of companies, they just see, they see a lot of indigenous
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I think, you know, we kind of see something similar in my own community where we agreed on
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something, you know, the Chief and Council got 80% buy-in from the people.
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And we had four or five people who weren't in agreeance to it.
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So, you know, they were causing some chaos and they were, you know, trying to block highways
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and trying to block railroads because they didn't agree with this, with what was proposed.
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So what ended up happening is, you know, we tried to incorporate them more into the discussions.
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You know, we tried to get, you know, specific answers of why they opposed it.
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You know, we got their side of the story of, you know, kind of where their thinking was going.
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And I think that's what most First Nations need to do.
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You need to include the people, even the ones that are opposing it.
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And we need to look at the specific reasons why.
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And I think if First Nations communities don't do this, they're going to see more opposition.
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Like, it's just going to grow and grow and grow.
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So part of it is up to us, you know, to make sure that education and knowledge is given at the right times.
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And, you know, and even including them in decisions along the way.
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Because if that's not happening, you're going to always have that divide.
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So I think as First Nations, that's kind of what we have to deal with now is we have to get communities on board
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and get everyone on board with the decision making.
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And I'll add to that, Andrew, because I think the Frontier case is an interesting one
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because the affected communities in the territory, and there's a little bit of discretion about who decides who's in the territory.
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They had, you know, their agreements in place with TEC.
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And the uncertainty came from whether the federal government would approve it anyways.
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So the uncertainty was 100% on the federal side.
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In that case, TEC did a good job actually consulting with First Nations and Métis settlements around there.
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And so, and that's the problem you're seeing today.
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And I think people are blaming, and Melissa knows this, people will blame First Nations.
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But the problem is often not with the First Nations side.
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It's with, you know, the political side of governments who, you know, maybe urban, you know,
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their urban voters aren't in paper project, even though it doesn't impact them directly.
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And it's certainly, like, we've lost, like, over $100 billion, $150 billion in energy projects
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We are not a competitive space for resource development because it is not easy to get a
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And you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Northern Gateway spent $700 million, some people say more, to get to the point of getting told
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And we're seeing Keystone XL do that too, suing the Biden administration $15 billion that they
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sunk into this after getting all the approvals.
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So there's a lot of blame being laid at the feet of First Nations, but I don't think that's
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Well, that actually touches on, I think, a very important point, which is that we see
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a lot of people in Canada who are ideologically against oil and gas sector development.
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They're against pipelines that tend to latch on to Indigenous causes or purported Indigenous
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And I know when you see some of these photos from some of these events, you're looking and
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you're like, these are just environmental activists that I'm not sure are even from
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And a good example is the Wet'suwet'en community.
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You know, like they took advantage of that divide.
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And they took advantage of the people who opposed the pipelines.
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And they sided with them and media, you know, the media ran with it and, you know, told the
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story that wasn't necessarily the true story of what was going on.
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And, you know, I think what we need to do is we need to hear all sides of the story.
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And this is why I think Chief and Counsel is really important in getting that messaging
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Because at the end of the day, they're the ones that make the decisions.
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And they're the ones that go through this consultation process.
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Like, they're the ones that are on the ground trying to get these deals completed, finished,
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And yet, they're the ones that are kind of, you know, they're kind of vilified in a sense
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when they do say, yes, I'm in agreeance to this because of outsiders who may not agree
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So it's a very thin line, you know, that we're walking.
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And we need to, and I come from the space where we need to tell all sides of the story.
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I want to talk for a moment, if we can, about that idea of the lack of homogeneity within
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Because there isn't just one leader or one spokesperson that can represent all Indigenous
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If you did have a leader, a Prime Minister that really wanted to get down and deal with
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this and address the concerns, who are they negotiating with?
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And I was wondering if you could speak to that, Heather.
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I mean, how complex would that process be to really completely start from scratch on
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Well, there's, I mean, there's so much going on there, as you know, Andrew.
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So a lot of the problems stems from the fact that, you know, the Indian Act kind of disrupted
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traditional governance systems and created this, you know, a democratically elected chief
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and counsel who weren't necessarily representative, you know, for the first hundred years, you know,
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it was maybe more the, you know, acting kind of as an Indian agent.
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And so now almost every First Nation, I think every First Nation uses elections, even if
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they have had their own land claim and could choose a different system, but people still
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prefer normally a democratically elected system and a chief and counsel.
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In some parts in the prairies, there isn't a hereditary system anymore.
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Or, you know, it's been absorbed into kind of a democratic system, where in B.C., in some
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communities and some nations, there are still the two kinds.
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So it's not as though there's hereditary chiefs or that there's the same governance system all
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across Canada and it's just, you know, out of control in B.C. or something like that.
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And in lots of cases like the Haida, you know, they built it into the Constitution.
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They have figured out a way for elected and hereditary chiefs to work, you know, for the best
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So it's not as though it's an inherently dysfunctional system to have a traditional and an elective
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But just, you know, in this particular community, there's a big polarization and going back to
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your earlier question, people are definitely using the Wet'suwet'en Nation to further their
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own agenda, probably on both sides, but I think a little bit more on the other side to blatantly,
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you know, disregard the fact that the elected councils are in favor to disregard the fact the
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majority of people in favor have voted for this in referendums, have reelected chiefs and
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councillors who are in favor of it to just disregard all those people because they prefer
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And yet, you know, on C-48 in the Haida Nation, we're happy to strip hereditary chiefs of their
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Or we're happy to strip hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en of their titles because
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So there is definitely some selective support for Indigenous rights.
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And it does, you know, it does look like to the observer that you support Indigenous rights
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And if the hereditary chiefs took a different stance on this, I don't think they would get
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I appreciate the background on the elected versus the hereditary chiefs, because I know
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that's been a source of confusion, especially through some of these protests in the last
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There's no one national leader of all Indigenous communities who could go to the federal government
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So I'm just interested in what a renegotiation of the Indian Act and a renegotiation of the
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government's relationships with Indigenous people would look like.
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And does that mean it would be too big to really be possible in our political system?
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So the strategy that the federal government has chosen is to use opt-in legislation.
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So there are quite a few federal government legislations that remove parts of the Indian
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So the First Nations Land Management Act, First Nations Oil and Gas Management Act, First
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Nations Election Act, which communities can opt into.
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So when they negotiate it, it doesn't mean the 674, however you count it, First Nations
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But they can take their turn and decide for themselves when they opt-in.
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So the Land Management Act, Melissa probably knows this very well, takes away about a third
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All the sections, provisions of the Indian Act that provide for the lands.
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So that's, and for me, that's the only logical strategy.
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You can't force 670 plus First Nations to agree on something.
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And so this opt-in, you know, strategy, I think is not perfect, but probably the least imperfect.
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Yeah, I think what needs to happen is you need to start giving some of these communities,
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the ones who are ready, you need to start giving them sovereignty.
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And you need to start giving them autonomy on certain, you know, when it comes to land,
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for example, from the Indian Act, they need to be able to manage their land the way they
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And we're not seeing, you know, the government let go of this control.
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If anything, you know, they try to implement more control on First Nations communities.
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So what we need to see is we need to give them the resources to manage their communities,
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you know, and this would, you know, help them come up with solutions to some of their issues
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So the more autonomy that you give them, you know, the better that they're going to be
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It's going to bring jobs to those communities.
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It's going to bring, they're going to thrive at the end of the day.
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But with the Indian Act, it's really constrained.
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And you can't, like Heather said, you can't apply to all the First Nations reserves in
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So I think we have to get out of this mindset that we're a monolith.
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And, you know, this is where sovereignty comes into play.
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If you give these communities a chance to make their own decisions, they're going to be
00:24:41.140
decisions that are the best for them and for the rest of Canada.
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So what would sovereignty, we'll start with the land aspect specifically, management of
00:24:49.680
land, Melissa, what would sovereignty look like in practice?
00:24:52.800
And more importantly, what has the government really used as its primary argument against
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You know, you can have land that's directly, you know, with the reserve or First Nation,
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and then you can have land that was purchased by the First Nations.
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So they have different titles that go along with them.
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One could be federal and the other, they would own their title, like they would own that land
00:25:22.000
So allowing First Nations to, you know, utilize the reserve land, the federal land, the way
00:25:27.160
they see fit, because that's often where they want to do their, you know, it's often where
00:25:32.600
the extraction is, you know, in the land that they purchase could potentially be for more
00:25:38.200
homes or for more housing or for, you know, for, to provide a place for people to live.
00:25:44.600
So that's what we're kind of seeing in my community.
00:25:47.020
Whereas, you know, others, they might want to purchase land within a city or on the outside,
00:25:52.460
outskirts of a city and, you know, provide homes for their community members that are off
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00:25:57.860
So, you know, allowing us to do this and allowing us to, you know, work with cities, work with
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urban planners, that would be a huge step, you know, regarding land and being able to
00:26:11.120
And what's been the source of the government's resistance there?
00:26:14.260
I think the resistance is that when you're on reserve federal land, you're more controlled.
00:26:19.360
When you own your own land and it's titled and you're operating it the way you want, the
00:26:23.940
way you see fit, you know, there's, there's a balance that needs to happen.
00:26:28.420
And I think the government, from my perspective, is holding on to that control.
00:26:34.260
They don't want to see us doing things that are out of their scope because, you know, it's
00:26:40.120
easier to control a group of people on a reserve than it is to control people off.
00:26:44.620
So, I mean, this is a very complicated issue because it's not, first of all, as a political
00:26:51.360
science, you know, PhD, I'm still good for the word sovereignty.
00:26:55.120
And so, for me, it's more self-governance, self-determination in kind of the international
00:27:00.660
I don't think, I don't know of any First Nations or Inuit or Maitre Settlements that
00:27:04.260
want to have their own monetary, you know, their own currency or their own defense or
00:27:08.860
So, not sovereign in the same way that we would think about it, you know, kind of in an
00:27:13.740
But having more control over lands is also, is not always easy for First Nations.
00:27:18.320
Some of these communities are two or three or 400 people and have limited capacity and
00:27:22.900
limited resources and are reluctant to take over more control unless maybe you agree with
00:27:29.820
Because as it is now, the federal government has a fiduciary duty.
00:27:33.340
If there is, you know, if there was the garbage dump leaked into the nearby stream, it would
00:27:41.320
If there was some other, you know, kind of settlement or appeal, the federal government
00:27:49.100
So, under the Land Management Act, for example, First Nation can take over more control and
00:27:53.620
then make their own laws and have their own land code.
00:27:57.140
But some that are reluctant to do it are reluctant because they don't want to have to absorb the
00:28:01.140
costs and the human resources and the know-how and the management of those lands that right
00:28:08.080
So, sometimes it is a simple capacity issue or there's mistrust in the community that, you
00:28:12.800
know, the members won't vote for that in a referendum because they don't trust that
00:28:15.840
their chief and councillor, their administration would do a good job, a better job doing it.
00:28:20.720
So, different, and Melissa alluded to this, different communities are at different stages
00:28:29.720
And maybe a smaller community is not ready to take on, a community of 200 or 300, to take
00:28:35.000
on all the responsibilities that a large municipality, even a province, would have.
00:28:38.840
Those are big, heavy things, you know, that only 200 people have to manage.
00:28:43.120
Education, health, you know, lands management, all these things, housing.
00:28:49.480
I, for example, live on the Satina Nation outside of Calgary.
00:28:53.000
We have, they have a subdivision, a residential subdivision.
00:28:55.640
I pay my lease money to them every month and they're a very wealthy, very well-organized,
00:29:00.760
sophisticated nation and have been able to take over more of that authority and are comfortable
00:29:05.240
with that and are sophisticated and are doing that.
00:29:07.320
So, different communities are at different stages of this evolution.
00:29:12.520
It takes a lot of capacity to manage your own lands.
00:29:15.000
And some aren't prepared to release the federal government of their fiduciary duties and assume
00:29:23.000
If that flexibility already exists to some extent, what are the structural barriers in place
00:29:28.280
that are preventing this vision that Melissa's put forward from being realized then?
00:29:32.440
But, sorry, I guess structural, are there structural barriers in the laws themselves as
00:29:37.000
they're written, I guess, is the better way of putting the question.
00:29:40.360
I mean, it definitely, and Melissa will be willing to jump on this too.
00:29:48.360
Not being able to run at the speed of business.
00:29:52.840
Not being able to use it as a leverage to get capital.
00:29:57.720
Having the minister has to have the final say on so many of these things,
00:30:01.160
if it's under the Indian Act and on reserve lands.
00:30:05.880
But even in the case where there have been land claims and large settlements,
00:30:09.400
like Nunavut and Nunavut, you know, in the north, where they aren't restricted by the Indian Act,
00:30:17.000
there are still other structural barriers, capacity barriers, cultural barriers.
00:30:21.800
Let me get your thoughts on that capacity aspect, Melissa.
00:30:26.920
Is there a way to overcome that or overcome that mistrust idea?
00:30:31.560
Which is, I don't think, specific to Indigenous communities.
00:30:34.040
I certainly understand mistrust in politicians.
00:30:38.840
That's very difficult, especially in an Indigenous community, because once you mistrust someone or a leader,
00:30:48.680
You know, even if they'd come back and apologize,
00:30:51.640
it's still etched in our minds that this person did this.
00:30:55.560
So, it's very hard to come back and say, you know, let's fix this.
00:30:59.480
So, oftentimes what happens, you know, if it happens with one of our leaders,
00:31:05.480
Or if it happens, you know, with a provincial government or federal government,
00:31:09.720
we just say, you know, we're not dealing with that person anymore.
00:31:12.920
So, it's very hard to, once that mistrust is there, it's very hard to come back from that.
00:31:18.360
Let me ask about the Indian Act, because this is something we hear people calling for its repeal.
00:31:23.400
And I know that if you were to undertake repealing the Indian Act,
00:31:27.160
you would need to have a very solid and clear vision of what would replace it.
00:31:32.520
Is that viable or desirable in your view, Melissa, to get rid of the Indian Act and start something new?
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You know, like, instead of trying to come up with something new,
00:31:47.400
You know, there are a lot, there are pieces in there that need to be revised.
00:31:51.400
There's a lot of amendment changes that have gone in that haven't even been addressed.
00:31:57.160
You know, if they're not even looking at amendments as an option,
00:32:02.280
And that's, you know, politically how it looks in a province or even federally.
00:32:07.320
You appeal or you try to amend a bill that's gone in.
00:32:11.800
You know, and we need to address the Indian Act in the same manner.
00:32:15.640
We don't need to do away with it, you know, because there are parts of it that are working.
00:32:20.200
But what we need to do is bring it up to speed, because it's no longer
00:32:24.200
a paper from the 1800s that's working in today's society.
00:32:27.880
So, we do need to start looking at some of the changes that we can make in it.
00:32:33.160
If you were a politician who were trying to do the best thing possible
00:32:39.400
for the Indigenous communities of Canada that is politically viable,
00:32:43.080
that is economically viable, where would be the starting point beyond sovereignty, Heather?
00:32:48.840
Let me just, first I'm going to answer the Indian Act.
00:32:52.440
Lots of ministers have had ambitions or thought that they could come in and take away the Indian Act.
00:32:56.920
And it was the old joke, I know, in the Department of Indian Affairs,
00:32:59.400
that one minister, a conservative minister, came in wanting to change the Indian Act.
00:33:03.080
And his nickname was Chief Running With Scissors.
00:33:05.880
Because anyone that wanted to change the Indian Act was, you know, in for a wild ride.
00:33:11.560
And like I mentioned before, there are legislations that have,
00:33:15.000
that allow communities to opt out of parts of the Indian Act.
00:33:18.680
And a lot of these have been brought forth by communities themselves,
00:33:21.080
you know, on oil and gas management or elections or land management,
00:33:24.680
where they say, we hate these parts of the Indian Act, we need an option.
00:33:28.600
And the federal government has played ball and created, you know, legislation that they can opt out.
00:33:33.480
But going back to your other question, Andrew, where would you start?
00:33:38.680
And again, you have to respect that there's so many different communities and nations in contact.
00:33:43.720
And so I think allowing them to have as much self-determination as they want.
00:33:48.840
And I think C-92, you know, we often criticize the liberal government.
00:33:55.160
That's on child welfare and allowing communities to take over.
00:34:00.040
They never said, you can take our kids and you can do our family care.
00:34:05.640
And so this isn't giving it back, but getting out of the way of First Nations
1.00
00:34:12.280
And again, it's on a community-community basis.
00:34:14.760
The community decides they create their own laws.
00:34:18.520
There's funding available and deciding when do they and how do they want to take back over
00:34:24.280
And I think almost every Canadian could agree that you wouldn't want China to be in charge
1.00
00:34:30.440
So why did a First Nation want Canada to be in charge of their child welfare?
00:34:35.240
So these kinds of opportunities, we're providing a framework, providing support, providing time
00:34:41.560
and letting communities decide how and when they want to take back those parts of their own governance.
00:34:47.000
When we talk about that self-determination and sovereignty, I want to be clear on what it is
00:34:53.560
Are we talking about communities that levy their own taxes, are responsible for their own spending,
00:34:59.080
that are basically mini countries with the exception of passport and defense and foreign affairs
00:35:06.200
Are we talking about something that looks a little bit more like Quebec, where the federal government
00:35:10.600
is giving them money, but they have a lot of autonomy and a lot of their own determination in
00:35:15.720
how they spend that money and how they allocate it?
00:35:24.440
But yet they are given the economy to make decisions, you know, particularly for their province.
00:35:30.200
And I think that's how it should work within First Nations communities.
00:35:33.160
Like, we don't want to be separate and apart from Canada.
00:35:39.640
So kind of segregating us how we are is not working.
00:35:44.760
What we need to do is we need to, with self-determination, you know,
00:35:51.240
Yeah, I mean, I think First Nations, they can and they should charge taxes.
1.00
00:35:56.360
And maybe they don't charge it to their own people because it's, you know, a big issue.
00:35:59.400
But they often charge fees, they often charge levies.
00:36:04.520
I pay, you know, I would pay to the Satina Nation, for example.
1.00
00:36:17.240
but is the closest thing to a large Indigenous government, 40,000 people,
00:36:21.480
still is going to be always reliant on the federal government.
00:36:23.800
That's still too few people to run all the services in the way that people in Canada
00:36:29.240
So for me, the more that Indigenous groups can operate in tribal councils
00:36:33.880
or regional councils or treaty areas to pool those services and have that economy of scale,
00:36:47.640
So I don't think there's, you know, anything wrong or unjust in, you know,
00:36:50.760
of having some transfers from the federal government and some support on the governance side,
00:36:58.360
Melissa Embarkey, policy analyst and outreach coordinator for the McDonnell-Laurie Institute,
00:37:03.240
also a veteran of the oil and gas sector in Canada.
00:37:06.760
And Dr. Heather Exner-Perot, fellow at the McDonnell-Laurie Institute.
00:37:10.920
And many, many titles connected to any number of resource and northern projects,
00:37:15.640
including the Saskatchewan Indigenous Economic Development Network
00:37:18.840
and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation.
00:37:33.880
I didn't expect that we'd have solved all the problems of Canada after just 40 minutes.
00:37:38.520
But I realized that getting even just a few concrete politically viable solutions
00:37:45.160
that a politician could champion would be very difficult.
00:37:48.440
And I think the big takeaway from there is that we're not just talking about one Indigenous community
00:37:53.560
or even a community that has one particular voice.
00:37:57.080
You've got certainly national groups like the Assembly of First Nations.
00:38:00.920
But even then, they may not speak for the interests and needs of all of these different
00:38:07.000
I think, like anything, the best advice is to let the government get out of the way.
00:38:12.120
And this is not something that I would say is unique to Indigenous Canadians entirely.
00:38:16.600
I would like to see the federal government get out of the way of provinces.
00:38:19.400
I'd like to see provinces get out of the way of the municipalities.
00:38:22.520
We're not talking about mass separation or secession or even segregation,
00:38:26.920
but a recognition that different people want different things.
00:38:31.240
Different groups of Canadians in different regional parts of the country want different things.
00:38:36.280
So no simple answers. But again, we don't do these segments for simple answers.
00:38:40.200
We do them to really delve into the scope of some of the challenges and
00:38:44.280
hopefully have a bit more of an honest discussion about them than we see in federal politics.
00:38:49.320
So with that, my thanks again to Heather and Melissa and to all of you for tuning in.
00:38:53.560
We'll be back Tuesday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.
00:38:58.680
This is The Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you, God bless, and good day.
00:39:01.640
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:39:03.880
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.