Higgs's 'new partnership' plan highlights gulf in understanding with First Nations
CBC
To some First Nations chiefs in New Brunswick, the "new partnership" the Higgs government is offering them looks a lot like old-style paternalism.
The province's proposal to replace the existing tax-sharing agreement is another example of the vast philosophical chasm between Premier Blaine Higgs and First Nations.
The government wants the bands to surrender any power or ability they have to impose and collect gas and tobacco taxes on reserve.
Instead, they'd receive provincial funding for housing, health care, social assistance and education — but subject to strict timelines for three phases of negotiations, and with "measurable goals" laid out in signed agreements.
"That's very paternalistic and controlling, and it assumes that we don't know what we're doing," Madawaska Maliseet First Nations Chief Patricia Bernard told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton.
"It assumes a sort of 'wards of the state' kind of approach. It assumes that we can't manage our own revenue … It's going back in time."
Six Wolastoqey First Nations will see their lucrative tax-sharing agreements with the province expire at the end of this month. Deals with Mi'kmaq communities end Dec. 31.
"The tax agreement has allowed us to grow, but if you're going to take that away from us, where do we go from there?" said Pabineau First Nation Chief Terry Richardson. "That's the problem."
Higgs announced in 2021 that he would terminate the agreements.
They require the province to remit 95 per cent of provincial gas, tobacco and fuel sales tax revenue collected on reserves to the First Nation government.
Higgs called the agreements "outdated," and he and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Arlene Dunn have been promising a more modern initiative since then.
"We're talking about a new partnership, a new way forward," Dunn said in the legislature in June 2021.
Early on, she floated the idea of signing "resource revenue-sharing agreements for forestry and mining" but she's no longer talking about that concept.
Shortly after the termination announcement in 2021, Richardson offered the province one-on-one negotiations on a new tax agreement with Pabineau that would cap the amount returned to the band.
