Posted on 06/16/2002 4:06:10 PM PDT by somena2001
A taxing situation on native reserves
Elizabeth Nickson
National Post
SALT SPRING ISLAND - You can't get me to walk down the road to speak to a neighbour, but I'll go to a tax revolt just about anywhere. So Monday, I packed myself up and, wearing my $200 straw hat from Madagascar, my steel Rolex, Balinese silver bracelets, carrying my pony bag from Holt's, with my smutty memoir from Paris popped into my straw bag from London, along with my two hideously expensive dogs into the (thankfully proletarian) Jeep, I went off to the Cowichan reserve on Vancouver Island to visit with people who really have nothing.
When I say nothing, I mean nothing nothing. And that nothing about to get less. In a high-handed act, typical of his mentors in Northern and Indian Affairs, the chief, Harvey Alphonse, decided to levy a 7% tax on the staples of reserve life: ciggys, petrol and booze. If, after your housing you have $147 a month left for everything, the sudden imposition of a 7% sales tax on principal pleasures and distractions, is well, very not OK.
Section 87 of the Indian Act, says in absence of a negotiated treaty, natives are not to be taxed. But Chief Alphonse's three million dollar architect-designed, taxpayer-funded band office, complete with meticulous landscaping, play area, umbrellas and patios must have gone to his head. He thinks he's in Ottawa and all powerful. Why not after all? As economist David Friedman quipped, looking over the band audit, "$17-million to distribute $5-million in welfare benefits could be a case study on the dangers of a managed economy. Why not just move into the band offices?" Right on, David! But back in the real world, the band is powerless to protest their management, and off the reserve no one seems to give a damn, so why not tax if there happens to be a problem or two that needs sorting?
But this time the natives were not in the mood to be taxed. There were meetings. Lots of them. And unanimous votes to not pay the tax. The band offices were occupied; natives refused to pay the tax on their petrol at the pumps. The RCMP were called. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs was called. "Er," said the bureaucrats, "you don't actually have to pay it if you don't want." They didn't want. Monday, 200 natives showed up at the band office with their receipts, asking for their money back. The chief decided his life was in danger and vanished.
Howls of laughter all through the reserve. Most of the protest organizers were in their sixties, and most of the protesters were mothers, their young children and organizers' wives. This amounted, however, to a crowd of 200 aged, helpless, babes in arms, women who needed help walking and enough dangerous-looking young men to help them.
Now this is inspirational stuff that one would like to see all over Canada. Forced accountability. Doing the homework of the responsible citizen. Just say no. Challenge the legality of every tax. Make them honest.
So, if you're looking for an educational day trip with your kids this summer, take that $40,000 SUV off to your local reserve and show your kids just what all those Quebec lawyers we keep electing, have done with the $100-billion we've transferred to natives over the past 10 years.
There's nothing quite so fun as sitting on a door stoop in the sun, shooting the breeze with some native elders. Believe me, they know exactly how that money's been spent, though they haven't seen much of it. In fact, not one of the 200 or so people camped outside the band office will ever have even the little I have, because there is absolutely no chance of capital formation on the reserves, as Jean Chrétien and his guru Pierre Trudeau decided in their long ago socialist limo-hippie days. The Indian Act prohibits any native from using his property as collateral, unless the person holding the note is native. Most small businesses are not started by benevolent loans from the Bank of Montreal. They are started with savings, and financed on equity loans and credit cards. But there are few property rights on reserve, and no clear title. Hence, the reserve is ringed with white businesses, but on reserve, other than the white-operated Khowutzun Development Corporation, financed by us, which has gone bankrupt once, there isn't even a field tilled for profit. Not enough capital to knit one of those Cowichan sweaters all the enviro-nazis like so much. Socialism at work.
But if you go, it's nice to go on a day when the natives are restless, because there will be drumming, and drumming is heaven.
Then take a drive around the reserve. No need to go to the Third World to see the squalor created by billions of aid dollars misspent with the goal of a socialist utopia. On the Cowichan reserve, every fourth house is boarded up and lots of those are condemned. They are newish houses, some no older than 10 years. But the owners have been evicted. Why? Toxic mold. Substandard building that locked houses in the rain forest up tighter than a fibreglass cruiser in Newport Beach. Pure poison. So! We pay for new houses. But they turn out to be poisoned with carbon monoxide. Yes, do let's give the outfit that created that mess another $200-million dollars or so. And for heaven's sake, do let's have another Quebec lawyer for Prime Minister. They're so good with money. And honest! Why, as the day is long.
BUMP!
Highlights of the First Nations Governance Act tabled Friday in the House of Commons by Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault:
-- Bands will be required to develop codes spelling out how they select leaders, including provisions for size and composition of the council, appeal mechanism, and maximum term of office. Majority of band councils must be elected.
-- Bands will be required to develop codes spelling out how they are managed and relationship of administration to council. Codes would include conflict of interest rules for council members and band employees.
-- Bands will be required to draft clear rules about how money is spent, including rules about annual budgets, control of spending, loans, remuneration, debt, debt management. Bands must provide annual financial statements.
-- Native bands will be subject to Canadian Human Rights Code.
-- Minister of Indian Affairs will have discretionary power to assess financial situation of a band and require remedial measures.
-- Any breaches of codes to be dealt with by a third party who would "fairly and quickly consider complaints." Third party could order council or band employee to take measures to rectify the breach.
-- Changes to law-making powers of bands: they could adopt laws for local purposes such as roads, property damage, traffic, public health; for band purposes such as preservation of culture and language, environmental protection and conservation, spousal rights; for operational purposes such as elections, conflicts of interest, access to information; for law enforcement purposes.
-- Act promises to clarify legal capacities of native bands vis-a-vis contracts and agreements; acquisition, holding and disposing of property; raising, spending, investing and borrowing money; and lawsuits. Reserve lands would not be affected, nor the legal status of bands.
-- Act won't apply to bands now under the following self-governance agreements: Cree-Naskapi Act, Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act, Nisga'a Final Agreement Act, and Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act.
I once had a conversation with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General about the abuse of status cards. The conclusion was then and is now that it was politically too hot to handle . A month ago I stood in line behind a young FN while he used his card to buy a bag of 99 cent bag of cheezies tax free. He was 8 miles from the nearest reserve but the clerk either didn't know or care to tell him to pay up like everyone else. I know of one case were the abuse of cards costs the Ontario taxpayer 250k a year in lost gasoline taxes. (Is Delaware ,Chippewa on the Thames familiar?) Just one gas station out of many located on reserves.The stories are endless, from the 1/4 blood grandmother trying to get her white-fathered grandchildren status so they are eligible for free university education to the Sask. chief's who jet to Europe to investigate gaming (slot machines), two or three times a year! .
Despite our band being in breach of 7 sections of the the CFA's accountability framework, regulations and conditions for recieving funding - AND that MR.Nault knows - because I have written countless letters to him and his deputy minister - and the PM, specifically outlining these breaches... his office takes no action whatsoever.
To be honest - DIA loves it when Bands end up totally mismanaged. It allows them to exercise more control over First Nations, when the band goes tits up - costing taxpayers more money, and remedial management is ordered.
In one instance - in one region of Canada, the director general for DIA - has put 5 bands into 3rd party management. This has required that 2 accounting firms be hired to take over the band's finances. We discovered that those two accounting firms are owned by a holding company, which is owned by this regional director's wife. Cool huh?
And apparently according to the RCMP, Auditor General, and the DIA, this is all perfectly legal.
I much prefer our band's type of accountability. Raise taxes on us - without our consent, and watch the fireworks fly.
CoonCome actually has a point in his concerns about what Nault is doing. These changes will not achieve anymore accountability for Band Members, they will entrench the multi-billion dollar Indian Act Industry, and all Nault has to do - is enforce agreements and guidelines currently in place.
Instead, he is attempting to legislate away First Nations rights - much like Jean Chretien tried to do in 1969 - when he was the Monster of DIA - and which was soundly rejected
As for me - what I will be pushing for, on our reserve is to see ALL taxes lowered for natives and non-natives alike.
Another fact to digest... Of the 7.8 Billion that taxpayers are having to be extorted each year to fork out to Indian Bands - more than 40% of that money is gobbled up in Ottawa each year, at the DIA level before it even hits the Band.
And after it is filtered thru the band office - less than 23 cents on each dollar, spent by the government on Indians, actually gets spent on an actual INDIAN.
This is why the squalor exists - that and the encouragement of welfare-statism and soviet style leadership....
Mr.Nault's HELP is killing my people.
I feel like tearing my hair out - these past 5 years trying to fight it. But we are making progress. On our reserve, in any case - people are not letting things slide. In fact - the kind of resistance occuring today - to government ineptness, abuses and mismanagement is totally unparaelled anywhere in Canada.
We discovered that those two accounting firms are owned by a holding company, which is owned by this regional director's wife. Cool huh?
Interesting. Forget Nault ,try Harper and Clark, then the papers. Sounds like we non-natives are paying the bill and are being kept in the dark. Or lied to.
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