Treaty Financing and Fiscal Relationships

Theme Co-Leads

Matthew Mehaffey, Mehaffey and Associates, representing Carcross/Tagish First Nation

Overview

Treaty implementation funding should account for Indigenous authorities’ desire to create sustainable and resilient economic and social development communities. In recent years, Canada has embarked on two different processes to develop a financing policy: an indication of the complexity and importance of financing for effective implementation. Financing agreements, taxation agreements, own source revenues, resource royalties, and fiscal policies of treaty partners as well as institutional approaches and capacity to engage with Indigenous governments were the focus of analysis.

Theme objectives

Our theme intended to analyze how treaty implementation is financed, including financing agreements, taxation agreements, own source revenues, and resource royalties through Indigenous lenses.
Assessing the role of fiscal arrangements in facilitating the sharing of wealth and the place of Indigenous Government in the Federal Fiscal Framework.
Critically examining efforts to harmonize arrangements, Canada’s fiscal policies, and governments’ institutional approaches and capacity to engage with Indigenous governments with respect to financing and fiscal relationships.

Initial theme research questions

How do federal approaches to financing affect treaty implementation and the exercise of recognized Indigenous jurisdictions?
Where do Indigenous fiscal arrangements fit in the Canadian fiscal federation?
What are the benefits/drawbacks of short-term ongoing fiscal negotiations on a treaty by treaty basis versus more formalized and streamlined wealth sharing mechanism?
What are effective mechanisms for cost sharing that facilitate treaty implementation and decolonization?
What are the policy, program delivery and institutional impacts of specific elements of finance, such as Own Source Revenue, and financing formulas and policies?
Based upon all of this, what improvements should be made?