A fix for the aboriginal issue

AFIs were started during the Mulroney years with a federal capital injection of $200 million. Today, the AFIs’ capital base is more than $1 billion and universally regarded as a success story.

In 2009, some genius inside the federal government decided that a group of six non-aboriginal lenders should be given $15 million in federal loan guarantees to back up loans to First Nations businesses. The AFIs were told they didn’t qualify for a program designed to encourage First Nations business ownership. This came just weeks after the AFIs were praised by former Indian Affairs minister Chuck Strahl as being a vital part of building a First Nations economy.

So, after more than two decades of developing a niche market, the AFIs were being expected to watch a new group of competitors move in and write subsidized loans at an interest rate they could never match. Not surprising, the AFIs were enraged, as any business would be, that the government was suddenly subsidizing their competitors.

Had the loan subsidies continued, the AFIs would have been driven out of business and First Nations entrepreneurs would go back to being dependent on non-aboriginal bankers and government largesse under the 1876 Indian Act.

Fortunately, somebody inside the federal government came to their senses and the discriminative subsidy program was mothballed, allowing the AFIs to get back to writing loans to First Nations businesses. It was as if Ottawa suddenly remembered that the mission was to get First Nations off the dependency cycle, not back on it. Put another way: modern thinking eventually prevailed.

We could all use such a reminder today as First Nations discontent – and the growing backlash from the rest of Canada – dominates the government’s agenda. As long as we see First Nations living conditions as something to throw money at continually, there will be no solution.

As long as a 137-year-old piece of legislation is allowed to marginalize one million Canadians into second-class citizens, we will be limiting the economic growth of the country as a whole.

About $500 billion in potential resources projects sit on land under the control of 500 First Nations groups. Yet, there are no discussions at either the federal or provincial level on how to get some of the bounty from those projects to foster a sustained economy in First Nations communities. Instead, we see First Nations Canadians as obstacles to resources growth to be overcome rather than as potential partners.

Organizations such as the Mining Association of Canada and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, to their credit, have had programs to increase First Nations participation in their projects for years. Is there something government can learn from the private sector?

About 400,000 young First Nations people will join the workforce by 2022 in a country that has a chronic skills shortage. Yet, there is no co-ordinated national program for First Nations education and skills development.

As a country, we should be asking ourselves why the First Nations of British Columbia, which are not part of the national treaty system, are wealthy while most of the First Nations communities in the 11 treaty zones in the rest of Canada live in squalor.

Recently, former prime minister Brian Mulroney noted that First Nations in Quebec have lived in relative harmony with that provincial government, probably because of the James Bay agreement, which has poured billions into First Nations communities in royalties. Mulroney, quite rightly, believes the rest of the country should be looking at Quebec for solutions.

As long as First Nations and non-native Canadians are locked into a blame game over who should be doing what, the squalor will continue and we all will be depriving ourselves of a greater economy.

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