all attendees are in listen only mode. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chris Bichard, and I'm a Senior Advisor on Indigenous Economic Opportunity with the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Development, and Competitiveness. Welcome to this edition of the Indigenous Economic Development and Reconciliation Spree series. It's brought to you in partnership with the BC Ideas Exchange. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge that we're privileged to be bringing you this webinar from the traditional territory of the Guangming peoples. Today, no one is the Esquimalt, Songhis, and Sonnich First Nations. The speaker series provides an opportunity for provincial and local government officials to hear from Indigenous leaders about the purpose and activities of their organizations, as well as potential opportunities to engage and collaborate in pursuing economic opportunity and reconciliation. Today's presentation is the third in our series on Indigenous Self-Determination through Fiscal Governance, and we'll be hearing from the First Nations Tax Commission on Indigenous Self-Determination through the implementation of on-reserve tax regimes. Could we advance the slide, please? Thank you. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Jessica, for a few housekeeping items. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. As probably everyone is getting quite used to online engagement, I just want to let everyone know a couple of things about go-to webinar before we get started. We are planning a question-and-answer period at the end of the session, so as questions come up for you, please do type them in the question box of your control panel. If you're having any difficulty with audio, sometimes it can be a network issue, and I'd recommend you try the phone-in option. You can do that by just clicking on the phone call, and a pin will pick, and a phone number, and a pin will pop up that you can give a, you can phone in by. And then the third thing, these presentation slides, as well as a number of handouts that are going to be referenced in today's presentation, are also included in your control panel in the handout section. So you can download those at any time, or you can visit our website when we post the webinar next week. So that's a reminder that today's session is being recorded. The recording will be posted on gov.bc.ca-economic-development next week. It'll be on our main page of the BCID is Exchange webinar series, as well as under the section for Indigenous Economic Development. And with that, if you have any questions or need anything, you can contact us to come on back. Thank you, Jessica. It's time to introduce our speakers. Chief, I'm sorry, Chief Commissioner Manny Jules of the First Nations Tax Commission, and I feel Mr. Jules has dedicated over 40 years of his life to public service in support of Indigenous issues. He's a member and former chief of the Kamloops-Dish Weapon, formerly known as the Kamloops Indian Band. In 1988, Mr. Jules led an amendment to the Indian Act so that First Nations could exercise the jurisdiction to levy property taxes on reserve. His vision and efforts led to the creation of the Indian Taxation Advisory Board, where he served as chair for 18 years. He was also the driving force behind the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, passed by Parliament in 2005, creating the First Nations Tax Commission and other Indigenous fiscal institutions. In 2006, Mr. Jules was appointed Chief Commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission. Mr. Jules is also the recipient of honorary law degrees from both the University of British Columbia and Thompson Rivers University, as well as the Order of British Columbia and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. Mr. Jules is a member of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business Hall of Fame. The Tax Commission is doing important work in terms of creating the legal space and providing the institutional supports that enable First Nations self-governance over taxation. For more on the Commission and its activities, please welcome Mr. Manny Jules. There I am. Good afternoon. I'd first like to begin by welcoming all of you today to this webinar and tell you a little bit about what I've been doing during the COVID shutdown. As I was mentioning to Jessica and Chris before we got online, I would spend a considerable amount of my time traveling all over the country. As a matter of fact, usually from Monday to Friday, traveling hither and dither. It was quite an adjustment to actually stay at home for about six weeks solid for my first quarantine shutdown. It was quite interesting I live up in the mountains and so when I came down to the valley bottom, there was leaves out on the trees. Where I live, there was still a little bit of snow, so it is going into stores, going into even the gas up. I hadn't gassed up for about eight weeks, so it was quite an adjustment. But during that time, I started to think about how many pandemics First Nations have been through. As a matter of fact, our history is littered with pandemics going back to 1492. But here in British Columbia, the first major pandemic we faced was in the late 1700s, which decimated a huge swath of our population. Then we had to deal with not only smallpox, but chickenpox, tuberculosis, on and on it goes. The major epidemic we faced was in 1862, 1863 with the smallpox epidemic. At that time, we went from over 30 different villages to 17 different villages to today. We know full well the resiliency that's required to survive pandemics and the hope and aspirations that are embedded in pandemics, because you have to be able to hope that the pandemic will pass and you have to be able to be resilient because you have to live, you have to survive. First Nations, because of our history, have survived that. But at the same time, I started to reflect on the 1910 Sir Wilfred Laurier memorials that was given to Sir Wilfred Laurier when he visited Camelops in August of 1910. What those words meant to our people and what they were actually asking for, and also just as important was a statement that our chiefs made to Oliver, who was actually the Minister of the Interior or the Minister of Indian Affairs in 1910. What happened when I was locked down and as I started to think about the former pandemics and how we survived them, but what my ancestors were asking for, which is incredibly important because we're still at that stage today. And so we all live in a province, British Columbia, that was established after the and really the boundary for Canada started to be established after the Treaty of Oregon and 1846. And that's kind of established the border between ourselves and the United States along the 49th parallel. And so when you look at the establishment of the British territories as opposed to the United States and its manifest destiny and how they treated First Nations or Indigenous Peoples in the United States is incredible. When the State of California was established in the 1840s, one of the first acts of the state was to ensure that Indigenous people were hunted and killed, scalps they paid for scalps, etc. And then funnily enough, or the irony is that around 1846, there was also the Mexican-American War, which brought into play Texas, the Southwest, California, Nevada, all of those states. So you can imagine what was happening at that time. And then out of that came the establishment of British Columbia. And the first overtures to Indigenous people, of course, were in our neck of the woods, were the fur trappers in the early 1800s. And then soon after that were the priests. And even that was fraught with some intrigue because right with the Spanish colonization, one of the things that the Spanish colonizers had to ask were Indigenous people of the Americas human. And so there had to be a papal inquiry as to whether or not Indigenous people were indeed human. And of course, after a bit of contemplation, there was a papal bull established that said that, yes, Indigenous people were human, and therefore we had a soul and we could be taken in a just war. And our territories could be taken over. And so the Spanish in their colonial approaches were quite a bit different than the British and the French. The French, you know, we had the first people that we had long term contact with were the Jesuit priests, the French priests. And so that's hence today why I have the surname Jules. And a lot of the people on this reserve have French surnames. And that comes right from the colonial era of the priests. And even here in British Columbia, what happened is that the Catholic Church, the Anglicans and others divided up the province to save our souls. And out of that, of course, came residential schools and churches and whatnot. And then the next group of people that started coming in is the Gold Rush. And so you could see a steady progression of the miners coming up from the United States, following the different Gold Rushes, California, and then into the Washington state. And then, of course, here in British Columbia, and then up the Barkerville. And at one point, Barkerville was one of the largest cities west of, I believe, Chicago. And during all of this time, the miners had to be fed. And so you had this whole phenomena of Americans coming up, driving herds of cattle up to feed the miners. And that led to ultimately major ranches being established, Harper Ranch here and budding the Kamloops Reserve, the Gang Ranch, the Douglas Lake Ranch, the O'Keeffe Ranch. And so that phase of colonization was really important for us, because up until that point, we enjoyed a lot of sovereignty.  And one of the things that we had here in the Pacific Northwest was a trade language called Chinook. And one of the words that we understood and practiced was taxes, T-A-K-S-I-S. And we collected taxes from a myriad of different people who traversed our lands and used our lands. They paid not the colonial government, they paid indigenous government tax for the use and benefit of using our lands. And so it was because of the drovers and the people that wanted to feed the miners that they started the protest, that Indians were unruly taken land away from them, grazing, that they weren't using the lands and that they should be allowed to establish ranches. And so there was a lot of pressure on the colonial government to begin to have a land settlement. And of course here in British Columbia we also knew it was happening across the country and indeed in the United States. And so that led to the early processes with Governor Douglas setting up what we called the Douglas Reserves on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. And also here in the interior the Douglas Reserves that were set aside by Governor Douglas in the latter part of the 1850s and the early 1860s. And that's a bone of contention between ourselves here in Kamloops, between the provincial government, British Columbia government and indeed Canada. And for the longest time Canada would not accept any pre-Confederation claims. And of course because of the terms of union, British Columbia said we've washed our hands of this issue and turned you over to the federal government and you're a federal responsibility and so it goes. And that's still a lot of the foundations of the disputes and arguments that we have trying to pursue our rightful place here in Confederation. And so when British Columbia signed on to the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous People, what we're now having to talk about is how and what path are we going to choose for the state of decolonization and how will that be achieved? And so when those discussions happen, of course you as public servants are incredibly an important player in that. As a matter of fact, you were the first Indian agents here in British Columbia. A lot of your responsibilities early on during the colonial period were to look after and indeed deal with the so-called Indian issues. And so when I started to think about that in the early days of the pandemic, one of the documents I started to think about was the statement that was given by the Southern Interior Chiefs to Oliver regarding what we called and still call the land question. And the first part is talking about we stand for treaty rights within the dominion and we want all issues of importance dealt with so that each of our tribe would be subject to these treaties. And so there's different interpretations of what treaties mean. And here in Shushuab territory, as you know, some communities are involved in the modern BC treaty process and some aren't. And those are political reasons and political choices that have been made. But it's clear that what we wanted to deal with are still the same matters that our ancestors talked about, whether you're in the treaty process or not. And we wanted to have a definite understanding regarding lands. We wanted to talk about water, timber, game, fish. Another such matter such as schools. And importantly enough, and this is one of the things that really got me thinking about what my former leaders were talking about, because one of the important things they mentioned in 1910 was doctors and aid to the aged. What are the most important issues that we've been facing through this pandemic? It's indeed dealing with healthcare, being able to look after one's self and one's community. But also the aid to the aged. Who's bore the brunt more than any other segment of the population than the elderly? More elderly people have died in elders homes than any other segment of the population in this country and indeed around the world. And so these words are incredibly important for us and they resonate to me even today. Indian funds will also stand for compensation to us by the British Columbia government for all of our lands appropriated or held by them. And that's important, including all lands preempted or bought by settlers, miners and lumbermen, etc. And one of the things that I found really interesting in the early days of the dispute between ourselves and Canada and British Columbia was how can these people claim 130% of the province of BC? There's not enough land for that. How can you justify that? I said it's easy. The province collects or maintains it owns 100% of British Columbia. The federal government maintains it owns 100% of British Columbia. That's 200% right now. Then you've got the myriad of different titles, whether it be fee simple ownership, timber rights, grazing rights, all of those myriad of different interests definitely add up to more than 200%. And so I said with us claiming that 130% that's more than reasonable. And as a matter of fact, I maintain to this day that the whole question of overlap should never be addressed by the courts. It should only be addressed internally by those of us that are affected by the overlap. And a lot of times the question of overlap was by agreement. One of the communities that I'll be talking about a little bit further down the line here in the presentation is between Kamloops and Spachman or Upper Nicola. And one of the things that happened and I found this out by visiting New Zealand in, oh it must have been about four or five, maybe six years ago now, that they went through a phase called the musket wars. And that's where there was new technologies called muskets that were taken by the various tribes in New Zealand. They turned those muskets on themselves and slaughtered villages. And that's what was happening with us with the advent of different firearms technology. There would be an arms race for us to get the better arms so that we could go to war with our neighbors. And that led to a situation between ourselves and Upper Nicola, which is Okanagan, so ultimately became the Fish Lake Accord, a treaty between ourselves as Shuwa and the Okanagans to lay down our arms so that we wouldn't kill each other anymore and begin to cooperate amongst one another. And that led to literally an exchange of children between our communities so that they would each be raised as Shuwa and as Okanagan. And so these kinds of issues, you know, and even when people say we've never had private property rights here in British Columbia, those battles over lines of the sand mean something because we knew those boundaries. But we also, by agreement, agreed to share those boundaries amongst ourselves. And so then we stand, we say we stand for the enlargement of our reserves. Whatever we consider necessary for that enlargement, by having sufficiency of land allotted to us to enable us to compete on better terms with the whites in the way to make a living. And then we also say we stand for obtaining of a permanent and secure title to be acknowledged by the government as such of the ownership of our present reservations, reserves, and such land that may be added to. And so those of you who may or may not know, I'm a strong advocate of having our own land title system. As a matter of fact, we've looked at the British Columbia land title system, and that that was one of the early models we pursued. And just to give you an idea, under the under the Indian Act, there is a registry and there are no regulations attached to this registry. And so a lot of times there's a lot of dispute about what what lands are held by the Indian Land Registry. And all of this started to happen as a result of the 1972 Delbert Garen court case in in Musqueam. And that led to the formation really of in the modern era of a proper land title system which still hasn't happened. There needs to be amendments to the Indian Act. So our lands are held by the federal government. And as part of the terms of union British Columbia transferred its ownership from the crown and the right of the province to Canada, but they retained rights to be able to resume property on reserves up to one 20th of reserve lands. And so if that led and has continued to lead to a lot of expropriations over over reserve lands for, you know, road right of ways bridges and trains and all of those other things. But the important thing also with the First Nations lands lands management regulations, there are only 32 clauses with its own land title system. And so with the British Columbia land title system, there are over 5,000 clauses and over 20 pieces of legislation to be able to manage their lands. And so my ancestors were thinking about that kind of complexity that we needed those kinds of institutions so that we would be able to compete on better terms as the whites. And the other thing that's really important to recognize there is that up until the 1980s, it was illegal for us to sell produce to anybody else other than a member of your reserve. Even though it was done, you could be charged for it. And so we still need our own proper land title system. And that's one of the reasons why the Nishka, when they entered into their treaty, asked for their own land title system. That's why Suassan and Manus and others have chosen to look at and register their lands under the British Columbia land title system. And we asked that these issues be brought to the Privy Council on England. And that ultimately was the downfall for us. Because once we started to push for the settlement of the land question, the federal and provincial governments in collusion began to work together to make sure that these events wouldn't take place. And so by 1927, it became illegal for us to raise funds to deal with the land question, to hire a lawyer. So that is a part of our collective history. And what we have to begin and choose today, when this legislation has been adopted by the provincial government here in BC, choose a different path to move forward. Recognizing that we're not going to be able to resolve all of the issues through one adoption, there's going to have to be a myriad of different pieces of legislation, just like the British Columbia land title authority, you know, up to 20 pieces of legislation. And I envision that in the future. So Jessica, maybe I can start with my first slide, or second slide, I guess. And so I've talked about British Columbia recognizing UNDRIP. I was in New York City at the time of its adoption. In 2016, I was there as a guest of Minister Caroline Bennett. And at the time I met with her, I also introduced the concept of developing our own infrastructure institute, which I'll elaborate on a little bit further. The challenge is how to practically implement British Columbia's legislation and commitments, and how to develop a more inclusive and fair economy for BC First Nations and to just as important to decolonize British Columbia. I submit to you clearly that, you know, when people after George Floyd were talking about systemic racism, racism is embedded in federal and provincial legislation right across this country. And so part of the objective of dealing with UNDRIP is figuring out a way how to best manage and have legislative to all of you are involved in legislation from time to time. And so we know how difficult it is to have legislative time, whether it be the provincial legislative assemblies or indeed parliament in Ottawa.  It started all men to address issues here in British Columbia. They do have a national application that we started pressing for federal legislation had its roots in what is called the Kamloops Amendment in 1988. And this came about because of my 1965. He started along with my band Mount Paul Industrial Park. And during one of the winters, it must have been a number of the tenants approached my dad and said, Clarence, we're paying a tax and we would like our roads plowed. And so my dad said, Oh, okay. And he phoned up flying Phil Gallardi, who was Minister of Highways at that time.  And his legacy is going to be, you know, not not withstanding all the Sandmans everywhere in BC. But, you know, just his legacy is incredible. About 65 years ago, you couldn't drive from Kamloops to to Jasper. You had to take a train. And it's because of flying Phil that we could actually drive up there. So, you know, I don't want to say anything too bad about Phil. But when my dad approached them to plow the roads on the reserve, after about a month, Minister Gallardi, back to my dad and said, you're a federal responsibility. Go and talk to the federal government. And so when my dad talked to the federal government, they said, Well, it's the province collecting the tax. Go and talk to the province. And this process went on until the, you know, Bill Bennett was the premier some just about 20 years later, or at least over a decade, 15 years later. And we started a tripartite discussions with with the premier Bennett. And at that time, the provincial government wanted us to incorporate as a municipality. And we rejected that here in BC. All of, as a matter of fact, there was only Kate Mudge that ever voted to municipalize themselves under, under provincial jurisdiction. And so we said, you know, if we have our own laws, then the, then the province and the federal government should vacate those areas of jurisdiction so we can take it over. And so that's ultimately what happened. I turned, I became chief led the First Amendment to the Indian Act from 1985 till 88. Federal legislation was passed. Jim Fulton was an incredible part of that. He was an NDP critic of Indian affairs at that time, as it was known. Nelson Reese was the member of parliament for us. And so we had back then all party support. And Len Marchand, of course, was in Senate. And so we relied a lot on him to shepherd this through Senate. And then Bud Smith, who was the attorney general and also a member here from Kamloops. So we worked with Bud to get the self government enabling act passed by 1990. And then by 91 First Nation community started to get involved in, in, in the legislation. And by right away, we started to look at creating our own piece of legislation so that First Nations would have a greater say over our own jurisdiction. And so that led to the management act being passed in 2005. And right now there's over 300 communities on the schedule. We've got over 600 million dollars collected in revenues. We've expanded our legal framework. There is about 1500 tax, fiscal and financial laws passed. We've got improved access to capital. We've got a triple or a double A rating for FNFA, 600 million dollars in, in financing. We've got a better administrative capacity. We created TULO. I think you had a, a presentation by TULO a little while ago. And TULO is interesting because what I decided early on is that we needed to be able to build up our capacity and therefore the education. And we have to have our own institution to be able to do that. And so TULO was created. And now we've got 22 original accredited courses and over 200 graduates. We've got financial management capacity, over 100 certified First Nations. And you know, when you look at all of the pieces of the puzzle under the FMA, the tax is an incredibly important part of jurisdiction without tax. You can't provide governmental services without transparency and accountability, which is the financial management board. You can't attract investment. You can't be accountable to your, your, your tenants. You can't be accountable to your membership. And therefore it creates distrust. And then with the finance authority, we looked at the British Columbia finance authority and modeled our First Nations finance authority on that model. And it's been very successful. We've got private investment of over a billion dollars. The second slide, Jessica. It's a shared governance organization. We've got 10 commissioners, nine appointed by the federal government, one appointed by the Indigenous Law Center out of the University of Saskatchewan. And it's also, we're looking at creating our Indigenous Center for Economic Development and Cooperation based on the Marshall Plan and the international model that came out of that, to look at taking over a lot of the federal appointments for all of these commissions. The head office is here in Kamloops. And I've also got another office in Ottawa. We provide regulatory support for property tax. We set standards, policies, procedures, and advice on legislative change. And again, you know, what's really important because a lot of the communities we work with are relatively small. And so it makes sense for us to work together to develop, you know, ongoing standards. And standards are affected by various court cases. As a matter of fact, there was one court case that affected us last year that means we're going to have to revisit and change the policies and approaches that we've used. There was a court case quite some years ago now dealing with the assessment appeal boards. And so what we had to do was change how assessment appeal boards operate on reserves. And some of our key functions is making recommendations. We approve laws under the FMA. And I'll tell you one of the highlights of my career really was signing some of the first laws as the chief commissioner, First Nations laws, signing it and literally making it one of the laws of Canada. You know, and one of the other things that I found really interesting about laws is that when we first started dealing with British Columbia to amend, well, to have enabling legislation for us to occupy the real property tax field, we looked to the federal government and the federal government said bylaws, Indian bylaws passed under the Indian Act are not national and consequence. Therefore, we can't use the Canada Gazette. And so we looked at of course we had to use the British Columbia Gazette. And that's why it takes a year for First Nations you first indicate that you're going to occupy the tax field. And then one year later, the municipal or regional district vacates the tax jurisdiction so the First Nation can fully occupy the tax field. And that's really critically important because what we need in a lot of these areas is an orderly transfer of jurisdiction. You know, you can't have a jurisdictional void, but you can't have chaos as well. And what I've been prescribing to First Nations and indeed to provincial and the national government is that we have to invent a way that ensures that there's a smooth passage of jurisdictions within the Federation known as Canada. In Canada, you when you look at the word Federation, you know, I always view it as a family and because you can do many, many things by agreement. The next slide. In 1997, one of the best trips I ever took in my life was with my good friend, the former former Attorney General, Mr. Budsmech, to the Yucatan province of state of Mexico. And the Yucatans, we've got a really interesting history. It's the only indigenous lead revolt that led to international countries recognizing it as a country. And this, you know, of course, they did it for their own needs. But when the Mayans rose up in rebellion against the Spanish and the Mexican, well, I guess at that point it was the Mexicans, the British recognized the Mayan state. And that's indeed the only state revolution, if you will, in indigenous history here in the Americas that's been recognized internationally. And so this is Al Castillo in Chitzenica. It was built about 900 A.D. And for me, it was the moment of the serpent coming down, you know, in the spring equinox and the fall equinox, it either goes down or comes down the stairs. And that's the corn planting season.  And of course, the equinox means simply the equal day. It's equal night and equal daylight. And this is a calendar in and of itself. And so if you walk up the stairs into the sweat lodge and right at the very top is indeed a sweat lodge. And if you went inside, which I did, there would be the four colors of the four directions, which we have all over the Americas. And so you've got the counting of the stairs and all of this ends up to 365 days. Again, of course, their most important star was Venus and Mars, but they used Venus a lot to you know, promulgate their law, not only their laws, but their conflicts amongst their different states. But the epiphany moment for me was all of this was built without government help, federal government or provincial government. We build it ourselves. So we had our own scientists. We had our own economists. We had our own culinary chefs. We had our own artists. We had our own inventors. And we have the capability and we've proven at time and come again, we've got the mental capability that anybody has. And this proves it without a shadow of a doubt. The second slide or the next slide. And so this is an important message. So as I mentioned, taxes, TAK, SIS is critically important. And that we understood this concept. We understood it prior to colonization because it was part of our trade language. We understood it during and importantly during the Indian Act period because the Indian agents told their fathers in Ottawa to get rid of the sections that allowed us to be able to tax ourselves and to raise funds to fight for the land question. But it also was more insidious than that because we could no longer collect taxes amongst ourselves that meant we had to have complete dependence on somebody else. And that was the federal government. And so true fiscal relationship is critically important for First Nations. And a fiscal relationship is really simple. It's who does what with what jurisdiction and orderly basis so that one choose instead of the provincial government and therefore give to the federal government. One of the biggest hurdles we have to overcome and implementing UNDRIP is this whole notion of liability. If you build a house who's liable to look after that. The federal government assumes it's themselves. And that's why the provincial government through Oregon said we want to build 500 homes on reserve. Why? It's so that it'll prevent to a small degree the migrant centers. And what happens in urban centers? Any of you who've gone to the Lower East Side know what happens in many cases. So my inspiration and other things particularly about philosophy. And for many years I didn't get philosophy. You know in Western culture of course it's rooted in in Greek. You know philosophers. You know it became a science of philosophy and how you think. And we had that as well. You know we have the ability to think. We have the ability to have conscious thought. We have artisans. All of those things that I mentioned before. But I learned that from him. I would come back from a meeting and I'd say God dad we had another meeting on the land question. And I said we all say the same things including the federal and provincial and First Nation governments. But we haven't got an agreement. He said well son one of the reasons is philosophy. It's because we all have our different thoughts about how those issues should be settled. And not going to the core of why they should be settled. Then he would always ask me is do they think like us? And again that was a philosophical question. Because a lot of times I've dealt with individuals that we've said pretty much the same things but we don't think philosophically about approaching and solving the issues that are at hand. And one of the things that I've learned from him is to be very practical. And that I also learned that we want to be part of this country. This great country called Canada. And so this is his teachings. We need legislation. But legislation for an orderly transition of jurisdiction. We need First Nation institutional framework to implement jurisdiction and to provide a regulatory framework. We need administrative capacity development to increase benefits from the jurisdiction. The next slide. Also it's national importance. Ledger art has its basis. The First Nations people would want to draw. They used that winter counts. So they would draw on a buffalo hide one or two important events that took place on an annual basis. And then in order to continue on that transition they wanted paper. And a lot of paper was ledgers for accounting. It goes back to the whole question of liability. And so when you think about those questions around liability they're also impacting real people. And some of the real people that are being disproportionately affected are the Navajo on the Navajo reservation. If they were a state they would be among the highest COVID infections in the United States. And in particular right now one of the front lines is not only Peru but also Brazil. Brazil is some of the highest death rates amongst indigenous people. Indeed there's going to be a whole generation of indigenous people lost to COVID during this pandemic. During the Spanish flu influenza of 1918 here in Kamloops. And it happened late in the year in November. My grandfather lost his first wife and four kids in the space of one week. And so you know these are hurtful memories. But these are hard and cold fact. The infrastructure deficit within First Nation communities on a national base basis is anywhere from 25 to 30 billion dollars. So nobody's going to write a check for that. What we have to do is methodically begin to and that's why I'm promoting our own First Nations infrastructure institute. So we can take on that liability and utilize the revenues that are that are built from our lands. And to give you a further example nationally we're collecting in the range of about 700 or 70 million dollars a year from property tax. Over those same lands the federal and provincial governments yourselves collect 700 million dollars in income tax sales taxes and other forms of jurisdictions that you apply on reserve lands that you should really be orderly vacating so that we can occupy it and begin to look after ourselves and pump that money into our own infrastructure so that we can better look after ourselves utilizing our own priorities. There's a fiscal deficit and that means how much money could we be generating if we had the tools ourselves. Just about 32 billion dollars. The amount of transfers that are made in our name are upwards of 17 billion. But even that's called into question because how much of that money actually reaches our communities to do good. This is an incredible one. It's the credit shortfall 175 billion. You know a lot of people talk about section 89 of the Indian Act. Oh we can't get rid of that you know but what that has cost what that costed us and what it continues to cost us is that amount of dollars. It means the amount of credit that could be available to us where we could put that good to good use starting businesses building homes having the same kinds of standards of living that other Canadians take for granted. The STEAM education and that's science and technologies and economics etc. We have a shortfall of 75,000 indigenous people and you see this time and time again whether it be in the provincial school system or even on reserve to a lot as a lot of extent because of the lack of funding from the federal government. Our students are not promoting are not promoted to deal with the science and mathematics and with those two foundations those are the foundations of building a technological base. And so we need investments in those areas and that's definitely an area where we've got to reach out and work with the provincial government. The investment facilitation and that's four to six times higher that means it's harder to have investment on our lands and it shouldn't be. Trains 12 billion that's one of the reasons I wanted to have an agreement with the Maori, the Naitahu in southern New Zealand so that we could begin to open up trade. One of the things they love is fish and so that's a natural for us to get into the trade with them. So our deficit as far as trades and exports is 12 billion and so we've got to be and in order to do that you need standards. You need the marginal plan for indigenous people. The last slide. I love this. So these are the two leaders I was telling you about earlier on. Chief Petit Louis, Chief Louis. Here in Kamloops we're all about the same size but five foot three that's why he's sitting. Johnny Telhitsa is from Upper Nicola. These were the two communities that were literally at war with one another until there was the Fish Lake Accord which put aside our hostilities and after that our communities even to this day continued to work together. Chief Basil David was there. Those two old chiefs ventured him. He was a chief from Cache Creek and so one of the things they talked about which I continue to espouse today is together we will help each other to be great and good. Together we will help each other to be great and good. That's the true meaning of the Declaration on Indigenous People. If you want to cut to the chase on how we can begin to build a better society that's inclusive for all brown folks, for black folks, for yellow folks in this land, it's that statement there. Together we will help each other to be great and good. So we're committed to work with you to build Indigenous institutions, to build Indigenous economies and to implement UNDRIP. We want to expand the FMA and to access long-term capital for interested First Nations and my other philosophical approach is everything that I do has to be optional. I don't want to force anybody to do anything they don't want to do and we also want to include the FMA option and treaties for interested First Nations and that's an issue we've been having with yourselves now going back to 2006 at least. We want to support more federal tax room for interested First Nations, what I call the FAC tax. It used to be the FAC tax. It's sales, alcohol, including the excise taxes and resource taxes, which includes the provincial government and all of the resources that you manage, timber, mining, all of those areas we've got to be able to have First Nations being able to collect a resource charge or resource tax on those items so that we can have a method of benefiting from the resources as we say within our traditional territories, but also to break down the barriers preventing those resources to getting to market. We have to support the creation of First Nations institutions for infrastructure and statistics and by that it simply means creative destruction. All of these things are about creatively distracting the colonial system so that we can be a fundamental part and fabric of this country and we have to support the work of the Tulu Center for Indigenous Economics and the reason for that is because that's our future. Those are going to be the folks that are going to take over these institutions in the future when I'm gone and I've got one eye to the past now because I'm going to be retiring in the near future, but not right away, but I want to ensure that we've got qualified individuals to be able to carry on the work and do the good work. And my philosophy as I learned from my dad in closing is that I want to work with all people that want to better all of us, including myself as Indigenous people. So thank you very much and thank you Chris and Jessica. So we've got probably 10 or 15 minutes for a question. Thank you, Manny. Thank you for really a wide-ranging and an excellent presentation. Yes, about 15 minutes for questions today. We have to wind up a touch early to the other commitments. So at this time, the Chief Commissioner will be taking questions from the audience. If you haven't had an opportunity to do so, you can contribute any questions you may have through the GoToWebinar chat function. Let me just check in on that. I can answer questions on the Beatles as well. Well, here's one to start, Manny. Have any, my apologies if I stutter through this because the font is quite small. Have any regulations been made under section 74? I believe it's B of the NFMA. So refresh my memories to what 74 is. I'm sure we have. Yes. Brenda, can you elaborate on section 74, Brenda, if you're out there? No, she's not here. It's deep. I better go ask her. It's one of our audience. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Ask Brenda. Well, Manny, you mentioned the need to, I guess, clear tax jurisdiction and sort of create space for Indigenous communities to, I guess, create revenue by getting into that space. And while there's a lot of work to be done, I know some's been done to date, and I'm just wondering with the work that's been done to date with the tax space that has been vacated, what kind of impacts are you seeing on the ground where communities have assumed this jurisdiction, this self-government power, and are implementing on reserve taxation systems? Well, I've witnessed it right across the country. You've seen better roads, better water systems, better sewer systems, better housing because of the infrastructure, better governmental services, and indeed better healthcare facilities. And so it's meant that we're now in a position to be able to provide more and more governmental services. But of course, that's limited on the amount that you're able to collect on a particular reserve. And so there is no right now, and we're contemplating it though, you know, some kind of an equalization formula once we get into the excise taxes and some of the other tax jurisdictions, particularly income taxes and whatnot. But real property tax just in and of itself, the benefit has been just phenomenal. One of the other things I think that is really important there is what it's facilitated when I first started doing this was that there was a lot of suspicion between local governments and regional districts in partnering with the First Nation communities. And indeed, when I first started talking to municipalities, because we weren't considered persons, we couldn't get into a contract. And so all of that's been changed now, Brenda. Okay. Ask Andre. On 94? No, no, 74. Okay. So I think there's been an incredible amount of development as a result of the Kamloops amendment. But more importantly, I think that the real working relationship between local jurisdictions and First Nation communities, lots of developments in terms of common water systems, sewer systems, bridges. We're getting to that answer eventually here, hopefully before we close up here. Jessica, did you have another question? Another question that came in was, can you give your thoughts on how government can best support First Nations and international trade? Well, there were discussions early on, I know, as part of the new NAFTA, that we should be included in part of those discussions. The reception from the Trump government wasn't that receptive, so to speak. But we have to be, the more we can play a role in terms of trade missions, the more discussions where we can begin to look at manufacturing sections, manufacturing facilities on reserve and involving entrepreneurs in those manufacturing sections, I think would be beneficial, particularly with international trade. There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not there should be free trade zones. And I get the question from tribes in the United States, what are the rules if I start to work with First Nations in Canada? What are the rules that I have to abide by? Are they federal and provincial rules, First Nation rules? And those really haven't been that clarified by the other jurisdictions to facilitate more trade. And so the way that I think that we could work together here in BC is by breaking down any, analyzing it of course, but breaking down any barriers and making sure that we're part of any developments looking at trade. Great, thank you. Chris? Thanks, Jess. Okay. Maybe one that came in is, can you elaborate on the benefits of having your own land title system? The biggest benefit would be an ability to build our own homes. So the housing backlog, if you believe Canada is 300 years, if you believe the Assembly of First Nations, it's 800 years. And the reason for that is, is because Indian Reserves, whose title is held by Her Majesty for the Use and Benefit of Abandoned Indians, we don't own the lands. And so the Minister of Indian Affairs has to constantly coast on the loan, which means the liability is really with the First Nation community. So the biggest benefit that we would have by our own land title system would be housing. And then followed by that would be the enlargement of reserve lands, again, because the federal government looks at any expansion of reserve lands as a liability. And so that process takes up to a dozen to 20 years. And that impacts treaty land entitlement on the prairie provinces. And indeed, it affects any discussions we have with all of the provincial governments for railway right of ways, for road right of ways as well. So just getting back to section 74, section 74 deals with the purposes of the First Nations Finance Authority. So no, we haven't, there hasn't been anything happened with that. It's just deals with the mandate of the FNFA. Okay. Assuming so, Manny. I'll move on to the next question. We have an individual representing the Swassan First Nation. And as the, as a self-governing modern treaty nation for the last 11 years, they are still reliant on the LTSA. So I'm guessing you might know what that is. Manny, is it a land title mechanism? So they're curious probably about the difference between the two systems, what you're advocating versus what they're dealing with. As far as the land title system? Yeah. Well, my understanding with the Swassan is they are under the British Columbia Land Title Authority jurisdiction. So their lands, but there is a distinction, as I understand it, with some of their lands are being held in like a certificate of possession. But the, you know, prior to COVID, I would take visitors down to look at those properties and, you know, the developments on them are just phenomenal, as far as the mall. So, Swassan's been doing an incredible job. What we, but what the part of the problem we've been having with the federal and provincial governments is amending the FMA to include communities like Swassan so that they would be able to be part of our borrowing pool. And that's been a big hindrance, you know, in terms of development being able to access long-term public debt financing. I hope that addresses the question a little bit. And maybe just one final question. I know we're running tight on time, but what land transfer instruments exist to support transfer management to First Nations besides fee simple? Well, that's exactly it. That's why I'm promoting our own land title system. They don't need to be transferred to our communities in fee simple, because we're saying we've always had title to those lands. And when I first started talking about this with the federal government, they were adamant that we would have to have a surrender vote to turn the lands over to us. And I said, these are already ours. Why should we have a surrender vote to do that? And so the only thing that I think is going to be required is federal and provincial enabling legislation to recognize our land title regime, if you will. We don't need those lands transferred to us in fee simple. Fee simple, as you know, is a fiction, right? You know, the provincial governments have created this land title fiction so that individuals could use that land. The underlying title to those lands always rests with either the federal or provincial governments. And what we're asking for is our title to be recognized within that constitutional framework. And the federal government could do it now under 9124. The limitation has been is that there's been a reluctance to do that. And that's why you've got some communities that have chosen to register their lands provincially. So pretty critical difference in an underlying title there. Go ahead, Jessica. Nope, sorry, I was just going to pass that over to you to wrap up the session. Thank you, Jessica. So that concludes our webinar for today. Please allow me to express our collective appreciation to many jewels for sharing the story of First Nations Tax Commission and so much more really today. We got quite a history lesson and a good one too. And for providing us insights on opportunities to collaborate in the spirit of reconciliation. Thank you one and all. Have a great afternoon and bye for now.