Season 2: #8 A Grand Bargain re-visited

Green mining can’t happen without Indigenous support. The time has come to offer a Grand Bargain to First Nations: all Crown land, and resource revenue, to create an Indigenous self-governed province.  The catch: the province will need resource revenue urgently.  

Transcript

7          A Grand Bargain

I have made the case for green mining as a source of national wealth. Nothing in this industrial strategy for green mining would be instant. Things take time. A government industrial strategy cannot happen overnight. Trump must still be endured. However, the chaos of the Trump trade wars will force Canada to re-invent the economy, and there is no better time to adopt green mining.

Green mining can provide a secure supply of minerals to democracies, which may or may not include the United States. It can create for southern Canada a number of large new industries that will be important to the future. These include the manufacture of micro Modular Nuclear Reactors, hydrogen airships, robotic mining, and the conversion of homes and vehicles to a hydrogen economy.  This should satisfy the concerns of most environmental activists.

Even if Canada makes progress on all of that, and commits to technologies for green mining, two major obstacles still stand in the way. The first is red tape. The second is political opposition from the First Nations.

The solution to both these obstacles is to recognize that the British North America Act of 1867 was fatally flawed, and the Constitution itself must be renovated. Consider a simple reality: the founding document does not include any mention whatsoever of the First Nations who occupied the land. As Canada expanded, Ottawa officials drew lines on a map to create provinces, showing no regard for the First Nations who already lived there. 

The land settled by immigrants was first occupied by force, then subjected to treaties. Most of the territory was unceded. The moral justification for taking land, under Church guidance, was that land not being cultivated was by definition unoccupied. Mostly, to quote Mao Zedong, power grows out of the barrel of a gun.  The settlers had guns, they took the fertile land, and declared if belonged to the Crown. What of the uncultivated land? In 1930, Ottawa gave jurisdiction over this Crown land to the provinces, including the resources. (The situation by the way  is somewhat different in the Territories.) 

Today, about 1.8 million Indigenous and Métis live in Canada. They make up 5% of the population, but nearly 8% of Canadians under the age of 14. First Nations and Métis have the highest birth rate of any minority in the country, and more people identify every day as Indigenous as pride in traditional cultures grows. The Indigenous are reclaiming their identity.

Representing Indigenous people in Canada, both First Nations and Métis, are five major national organizations. Each organization has a purpose, a constituency, that is unique. The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) alone represents 634 First Nations with 900,000 members. There are over 3100 reserves spread all across Canada. Most First Nations are subject to the 1976 Indian Act, a document they totally despise.

There are some political structures controlled by Indigenous peoples, such as those in Nunavut. Yukon has many self-governing First Nations, each with its own federal legislation outside of the Indian Act. All three of Canada’s territories are at different stages of a process of devolution, as they take over responsibility from the federal government for land and natural resources with separate agreements. Manitoba has an Indigenous Premier. Canada has an Indigenous Governor General.

British Columbia illustrates the complexity facing government. The province has seven distinct Indigenous languages, and 204 different First Nations. Ninety-five percent of the land, including Vancouver, is unceded territory. When the provincial government recently launched consultations on land management, some in the non-Indigenous community panicked. They falsely accused the government of planning to turn the land over to the First Nations. 

Canada is a patchwork of jurisdictions, treaties, non-treaties, broken treaties, endless negotiations, and court procedures that last forever. It grinds on and on. Complicating everything, relations between different First Nations are as complicated as politics in the Middle East. Each and every nation demands to be heard, and this fragments unity among the First Nations. Efforts to bring unity and focus on a cohesive strategy always seem to fail.

When RoseAnne Archibald was elected as National Chief of The Assembly of First Nations in 2021, she immediately spoke of restitution, and of kicking “colonial policies to the curb.” Chief Archibald, however, did not last long. She was ousted after accusations of workplace harassment and for having created a toxic work environment. 

Archibald was replaced by Chief Cindy Woodhouse, who then warned “Canada, we are coming for you.” No-one paid attention to the threat. There was no reason to do so.

The reality is, the First Nations cannot tell us what meaningful restitution might look like. There is no groundswell of urgency within the Indigenous community for dramatic action. The clear sense of frustration and grief has not coalesced into a political force. There is also an awareness that protest would be met with force by governments, and that force would be supported by a majority of Canadians. This is the side of Canada that is kept under wraps.

This is not ancient history. When Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister, one of his early initiatives, which failed, was to eliminate the Indigenous status and to assimilate the First Nations. By the time the Constitution was amended in 1982, Pierre Trudeau had changed his tune, and the First Nations were acknowledged. The courts have been trying ever since to sort out the rights of the Indigenous based on old treaties, broken promises, and unfulfilled agreements. 

This tangled history of Canada, the provinces, Crown land, resource royalties and regulation, and the First Nations is a direct cause for the red tape and lack of investment in Canadian mining. Mining companies have to jump through too many hoops, too many jurisdictions.  The Constitution as it stands creates many of these hoops.

Consider two facets of the rapidly changing financial picture for Canada, using the latest data I could find.

In 2022, the oil and gas industry paid $34 billion in royalties to the provinces, mostly Alberta, not including taxes. 2019, the mining industry paid about $10.6 billion in royalties and taxes combined. In coming decades, oil royalties will slowly dwindle.  There are no royalties on sun or wind. If mining revenues do not shoot up, that is a big hole in the government budgets.

On the other part of the ledger, two recent agreements to compensate for the lack of First Nations Child and Family Services alone cost about over $70 billion. There are many Indigenous claims yet to be resolved. These will cost tens of billions more.  That’s going to be another big hole in the budget.

So, where will the money come from to fill these holes, especially if the trade war leads to an economic downturn and higher deficits? Conservative pundit John Ivison already noted that the budget for Indigenous spending is twice the size of defense spending.  Ivison wrote that “Indigenous funding is likely to prove a tempting target” to a Prime Minister seeking to reduce government spending. Non-Indigenous Canadians are already suffering the Trump-induced economic chaos. The money for Indigenous restitution is just not going to be there.  

Getting major new revenue from mining is the only solution.  There is no tooth fairy. The technologies for green mining can be built, resolving the clean, green and affordable concerns. Energy, transportation, robotics… all this can be done. But investors still need less red tape, speedier approvals, and enthusiastic Indigenous support in order to avoid endless delay. 

The solution, the bold solution, is to renovate the Constitution. That renovation should be on the basis of a Grand Bargain with the First Nations. It should take all Crown Land, provincial and federal, and all reserves, to create a single new province. This province would require the Indigenous to determine their own version of collaboration and democracy.  The 1976 Indian Act would be repealed. A single financial settlement would amount to a re-set button on historical wrongs.  Restitution.

The province would then create a single set of resource-related regulations and royalties, reducing red tape. The incentive is clear: they need the money. The Indigenous leadership would then work with Ottawa to create industrial strategies that build the industries required for green mining. Southern Canada would get the industrial jobs to build everything that is needed. Even Alberta would benefit if it anticipates the future, and is not stuck in the past.

For the Indigenous to collaborate in a Grand Bargain, real leadership would be essential.  There are glimmers of hope that the Indigenous may work together. A massive cultural revival appears to be underway across what is called Turtle Island. Cultures and languages are being reclaimed. Native pride is on the rise. For millennia, First Nations had their own traditions, beliefs, ceremonies, and sense of spirituality. These have seldom been respected by the Crown. But that is starting to change. Canadians are becoming aware of what was done to the First Nations in the name of the Crown. Many Canadians would support restitution, if it was affordable and mutually beneficial. 

With all this in mind, the concept of a province owned by the united Indigenous people would achieve three things. 

First, culturally, the First Nations would democratically control all the programs and departments and budgets that impact their lives. They would have self-determination. This is no small matter. Up to now the Indigenous peoples have too often fought each other in petty ways, and not shown the political and diplomatic skills that are required. That would need to change, but there are signs this is already   taking place. Faced with a momentous opportunity, leaders would have to rise to the occasion.  Within the confederacy that would emerge, there would necessarily be space for individual First Nations to protect and preserve their own diversity of language, culture, and ecology.

Second, financially, the new province would need income. The simplicity of the Grand Bargain is this: the new province, with all its resources, would be exchanged for cancellation of all existing claims and legal obligations. Of course, it would not be quite this simple, but that is the premise. The new province would need a lot of money to pay for the modern services their people demand. This need for money would provide an incentive to embrace a sustainable industrial strategy based on green mining. This vision offers a future of wealth, rather than one of constant sorrow. The province, as landowner, could provide a “one window” service to investors like mining companies. The province would set clear green rules, with reduced red tape and minimum delay. Along with Micro Modular Reactors, robotic mining, and hydrogen airships, the pieces needed for success could be put in place.

The third major benefit: politically, non-Indigenous Canadians would have a powerful reason to support a Grand Bargain. Many now disrespect the Indigenous, and see First Nations as a drag on the economy. A Grand Bargain could turn this equation around. A green mining boom would benefit all Canada. New industries to support green mining would spring up in the south to support that industry, generating revenue for the rest of Canada. The Grand Bargain would benefit both sides. 

None of this could happen without Indigenous unity. The diversity of First peoples is both a strength and a weakness. On Turtle Island, there are so many distinct languages and traditions and cultures, distinct ways of living in such diverse ecosystems. Cooperation is rare and difficult.

On the other hand, a cultural rejuvenation across Turtle Island is as mentioned underway. That by itself is not enough, but is a start. The ecosystems that supported Indigenous cultures are under threat. Climate crisis is everywhere on Turtle Island. The old ways of life are gone. There is no unified vision of an Indigenous future that takes into account the planet as a whole. In seven generations, the arctic ice will likely be gone, the permafrost a distant  memory. There is no going back.

A challenge for Indigenous Canadians is that only in political unity can they have real influence, and steer their own destiny. Historically, they have been divided, and have been conquered. Each nation, each treaty, each band, has had to fend for itself. 

Benjamin Franklin famously said of the American revolution that "We (the rebels) must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." That will be the fate of the First Nations if they cannot find unity in common cause. That common cause might be a “Grand Bargain”.