Collective or individual? The key question behind distributing $10B Robinson Huron Treaty settlement

The 21 Robinson Huron Treaty First Nations in northeastern Ontario will soon come into serious money as band councils prepare to distribute a $10-billion settlement for past annuities among themselves and their members.

It's akin to winning a small lottery — if you take luck out of the equation and replace it with generations of ancestors who didn't receive annual payments they were promised by the Crown in 1850 in exchange for the rights to use their lands.

A clause in the treaty tied the annual payments' value to resource revenues. Mining, lumber and fishing industries generated billions of dollars in profits over two centuries, but annual payments to First Nations were capped at $4 per person in 1874 and haven't increased since. 

In 2018, the Superior Court of Justice ruled the province had an obligation to increase the annuities. Under the $10-billion settlement reached last year, the Ontario and Canadian governments will pay half each.

But who will receive how much and when is unclear as key decisions around what should be individual and what should be collective have yet to be made by the communities involved.

Here's an overview of what's at stake. 

The 21 communities aren't starting from scratch. They rely on a compensation disbursement agreement adopted in 2012, years before the annuities case had its first date in court.

That agreement spells out how any potential settlement is to be shared among the First Nations.

It can be amended with the support of 13 of the 22 Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund (RHTLF) trustees, who were elected by band councils to represent their community and serve terms of five to seven years.

Duke Peltier, a member of the RHTLF litigation management committee, said there are several proposed amendments to the agreement now that the amount is known and the distribution process has begun.

He said the $10-billion final figure is much higher than what was anticipated when the agreement was negotiated a decade ago. 

"In those days, they were talking about hundreds of millions, potentially," he said. 

Just last week, the 2012 distribution formula was amended. 

It previously stated 25 per cent of the funds were to be shared according to the number of annuitants in a given community. Annuitants are the people currently receiving $4 annually from the Crown.