In praise of taxes

The contents of this paper are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect a position of the IOG, its Board of Directors, or the Department of Finance Canada. [...] Section IV returns to the context of First Nations by drawing the relevant parallels to the international literature; it also outlines the experience of certain First Nations in the Yukon, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan that are now practicing taxation of their members. [...] A final goal of the paper is to present the policy and research options for First Nations governments on the one hand and the federal government on the other. [...] In his view, this original belief—combined with the same belief of many contemporary Treaty 8 people—required Canada to recognize and fulfill the tax assurance as a means to preserve the honour of the Crown.1 In 2003, the Federal Court of Appeal reversed the earlier decision, stating that the oral history Justice Campbell relied on had been selective and sparse.2 The Supreme Court of Canada later [...] By-laws for “taxation for local purposes of land, or interests in land, in the reserve, including rights to occupy, possess or use land in the reserve”8 would be subject to approval by the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada— at the advice of the First Nation-led Indian Taxation Advisory Board, which was created to support the Kamloops Amendment in 1989.