Public Policy Sources #38:
Asset Management

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The matter of administering commonly held property is a very different issue. Much of the work of the Third Order of government proposed in the Nisga'a Treaty would relate to asset management, and those aspects of the treaty can be easily preserved.

Administration of Indian community property by organizations controlled exclusively by Indians is nothing different in principle from the many corporations and societies that manage property under ordinary Canadian law. There is no conflict here.

However, Indian asset management entities as set up in the Nisga'a Treaty (or by Band Councils across the country, for that matter) are no ordinary societies or corporations, which are merely instrumental or supplementary to most private property holdings in Canada. Rather, they are holding vehicles for essentially the entire asset base of a community in many cases.

It can be argued, and I do so here, that community ownership of most property is inferior to private ownership of most property, in terms both of husbandry and freedom. Indeed, that is one of the major lessons of the twentieth century, in the economic and political failures of the communist experiments. And in respect of the freedom issue, power over asset management (through the bestowal or withholding of benefits or related jobs) can become just one more route by which a government has the power to control its people and their votes.

Of course, adopting the communal property route as a part of treaty settlements is a judgement to be made by the owners of Indian property and no one else.19 But other choices should be open, and assessed and chosen by the community, rather than having this single model not just assumed, but actually imposed by treaty. Other Canadians have no right to use their legal power to impose such a model as a matter of law, which is what the Nisga'a Treaty (for example) does.

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