Aboriginal Provinces

Summary:

North America has had a long standing problem with an oft ignored and abused collection of ethnicities that are usually known as "Aboriginals" or "Native-americans" or "Indians".  In recent times they still suffer problems due to a high rate of poverty and all of the associated characteristics that is typical of an impoverished community (aboriginal or not).  In Canada, they make up the vast proportion of the poor and so tackling the poverty issue would have the greatest impact in reducing poverty in the country.

The general idea is to turn aboriginal treaty land into small provinces.  They will run their own governments, assembled with rules each tribe/band decides themselves.  They will have their own system of taxation decided by their government.  They will be included in the Federal tax system but, as they become part of that system, they will also be included in the Equalisation Formula to ensure they receive a fair amount of tax dollars for services.  The provincial borders are as static as today's provinces allowing natives to finally use their land as security to obtain mortgages (or for their people/governments to rent out land for commercial use without fear they will "lose" land).

With an additional set of anti-poverty programs, the eventual goal is to have Aboriginals enjoy the same standard of living as the average Canadian (barring differences due to increased cost of living for more remote locations).



Long Description:

A long-standing issue with Aboriginal groups have been with land rights.  In general, a lot of times, Aboriginal bands must give up land and sell it to various corporations or government, or are otherwise forced into those situations.  As a first step to solidify the holdings of the various Aboriginal groups would be to convert treaty land up to a "territory" or "province" status.  The government of these provinces forever owns the land, thus can impose property/land tax as they see fit and never lose land in return for commercial development.

The next issue is self-governance and the implications for taxation and Federal control. As a source of data, the government had compiled statistics about spending, sources of expenditures and reasons for differences in expenditures between Aboriginals and Non-Aboriginals, which can be found here. The various Aboriginal tribes will choose their own band councils, which will be equivalent to a provincial government, in whatever manner they see fit. In turn, that government will then choose to tax residents of the province as the constituents have indicated.

However, with this system of Aboriginal lands as provinces it will mean that they are subject to the Federal tax system.  In general, the Federal tax system already tries to ameliorate heavy taxation of the poor via basic exemption and other tax reduction techniques.  Obviously, Aboriginals will enjoy these same benefits.  But, as these lands will now become a part of the provincial system of Canada, it also means they will enjoy the Equalisation Program.  Rather than a Federal Indian Affairs minister and the associated bureaucracy dictate or approve how a band might run their land, they will receive funding like the Equalisation Program, the healthcare program and so on, just like any other province and put these funds toward providing social services to the residents of the province.

Of course, it should be understood that communities with high levels of poverty have difficulty in developing economic opportunities to increase household income levels. Financial institutions are more reluctant to give business loans, foreign investment is not likely to target non-affluent neighbourhoods and crime/abuse tends to perpetuate problems unless actively combated.  Therefore, there should be a transition period in which additional anti-poverty programs are put into place to target these issues, a program which shifts down as Aboriginals finally enjoy a standard of living equal to the average Canadian.

A slew of spending on anti-poverty usually revolves around the construction of schools and universities (as shown in the data, extra funding is likely required for Aboriginal communities due to being more remote on average compared to non-Aboriginal communities), healthcare (poor health is definitely related to poor economic performance, and the spending shows that Aboriginals only receive 65% of what non-Aboriginals receive) and housing (it is hoped that the ability to obtain mortgages will resolve some of the housing situation with Aboriginals but it is also likely necessary to continue to spend a large amount of money to "get it started").

Finally, there is one point that should be addressed because it can create a serious political roadblock to the adoption of these programs (although the blog's title is politically untenable, there is effort spent here to at least make it less untenable).  The data does not reflect any higher incidence of corruption or waste on the part of Aboriginal leadership in comparison to non-Aboriginal leadership.  And secondly, looking at StatCan data here, we can see that Aboriginals work just as hard as any Canadian and rather have statistics typical of communities suffering high rates of poverty.  We should let Aboriginals succeed.

At no point should "third party" governance ever be a solution to native problems.  If this point seems unusually stressed in comparison to previous posts it is because third party management is of such a ridiculous and illogical nature that it needs to be stressed.  It would never occur in non-Aboriginal governments no matter how terrible the situation (eg. would East Vancouver be put under a Federally-appointed third party manager?), therefore we should never propose solutions that we would never impose on non-Aboriginals.


Rationale:

The rationale should be obvious.  While these programs speak primarily about Aboriginals being lifted to the average Canadian standard of living, the anti-poverty programs would include non-Aboriginals as well.  It is merely that Aboriginals make up such a large percentage of the Canadian poor that they would logically receive the vast proportion of anti-poverty spending.

All Canadians should enjoy a government that they vote in, not a third party manager and all Canadians should enjoy a high standard of living.

Tools:

The greatest tool is of course Statistics Canada who can start to collect "province" specific spending, and collect data logically to reflect the performance, tax revenue and expenditure of native tribes. 

The second greatest tool are the residents of the new Aboriginal provinces.  They will finally have the ability to dictate their will to a local government who is beholden only to them and not the Federal or Provincial government.

It is difficult to judge the effect of various social programs but Statistics Canada can try to keep geographic data on low-income incidence and perhaps a second "absolute poverty" statistic.  Then one could compare the performance of different Aboriginal provinces versus their choice of social programs.

(It's rather strange that no government has ever requested an absolute poverty statistic and an absolute poverty statistic should indicate the year in which it was composed to reflect that more modern societies typically include a larger basket of goods as basic necessities)


What I'd like to talk about later:
Corporate Tax Revisions and Business/R&D Grants
Healthcare - Preventative Care
Nursing Home Funding
Incubator Program
Informed Voter Metrics