Twelve Important Things the Government Isn't Saying About the Nisga'a Agreement

Contact:

Stuart Adams, Consultant,
Stuart Adams & Associates Planning Consultants, (604) 688-6872 Email: michaelw@fraserinstitute.ca

Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582 Email: suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca

Release Date: 21 January 1999

VANCOUVER, BC>>>  The BC government is not discussing important facts about the Nisga’a Agreement says a new paper, Understanding the Nisga’a Agreement, released today by The Fraser Institute.

"Advertisements bought by the BC government, in particular, have not been designed to inform, but to sell. They select and spin information, putting the agreement in the most flattering light. They appeal to emotion rather than reason," says the study’s author Stuart Adams.

By going as far as they have with the Nisga’a negotiations, government is holding out the promise of a generous new deal for Native Canadians that will cost tens of billions of dollars. The problem with this new deal is that it is more of the same, the sinking of more taxpayer dollars into a vast bureaucratic structure that produces only meagre benefits for individual natives.

Here are the twelve points the government needs to discuss openly:

1. This agreement will give the Nisga’a more land than most registered Natives now have, and far more than has been given in recent land-claims settlements outside BC. Under the terms of the agreement, the Nisga’a will receive almost nine times more than the average amount of land now allocated to Native Canadians.

2. In addition to land, the Nisga’a will receive more cash and benefits per capita than have been received in other land claims settlements. Under the current terms, the land plus cash value of the agreement comes to between $92,000 to $93,000 per Nisga’a.

3. The agreement will entrench an historically unprecedented, two-tier form of Native government that extends its reach beyond territorial boundaries.

4. In addition to these substantial gains, the Nisga’a will continue to qualify for a majority of the special benefits available to registered Natives, but not to other Canadians.

5. Nisga’a taxes (even after they are fully phased in) will not come close to meeting the increased costs of their own new level of government, in addition to their share of the costs of the provincial and federal governments.

6. There is no evidence that the agreement offers any solution to the economic problems in reserve communities. The general economic trend is away from rural resource-based economies towards urban, knowledge-based and service sector economies. It is unclear that the expansion of the Nisga’a territory will provide sufficient new economic opportunities to substantially increase the incomes of Nisga’a living in the Nass Valley.

7. There is no evidence that Native Canadians require their own expanded homelands and governments to recover and preserve those unique cultural traditions they most value.

8. Native segregation, expanded governments, and entrenched bureaucracy serve the interests of Native politicians and bureaucrats and further feed the expensive and inefficient bureaucratic maze that has been built over the last thirty years to administer programs to Native Canadians.

9. The majority of ordinary Native people have found their own alternatives by voting for greater integration into the mainstream of Canadian society with their hearts, minds and feet. With the Nisga’a Agreement, the federal and provincial governments are offering Natives nearly irresistible incentives to opt for special status and segregation.

10. If approved, the Nisga’a Agreement will have huge ramifications, ultimately costing Canadian taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in settlements and on-going support as other Native Canadians rightly request settlements of equal generosity.

11. By way of illustration, expenditures by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs increased from $2.03 billion in fiscal year 1988/89 to $4.50 billion in fiscal year 1998/99. Including expenditures by other departments, total federal spending on Native programs comes to $6.3 billion in 1998/99.

12. In past treaty and land claim settlements Native individuals were often offered choices such as the option to remain a registered Native or opting out in exchange for compensation plus full citizenship. This agreement provides no such flexibility to the Nisga’a people.

13. A more equitable and practical deal should instead be considered, one that favours no Native group over others, treating all equally, and offering choices.

"My suggestion is that the Nisga’a agreement be put on hold and that our governments commit themselves to a new course of action. This would involve consultation with ordinary Native people, not just the elected leaders of on-reserve Natives and their consultants and lawyers, and developing alternatives that work best for all of them, not just the privileged few," concludes Adams.

A companion piece to this paper written by Gordon Gibson, Senior Fellow in Canadian Studies at The Fraser Institute, will be published next week by the Fraser Institute.

Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver.

For further information, or for a copy of Understanding the Nisga’a Agreement, contact:

Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca

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