OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney sat down Monday with First Nations leaders and the country’s premiers in the first such meeting in two decades, and used the gathering to launch discussions on a new First Nations Sovereign Wealth Fund while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew called for the Indian Act to be abolished.
The meeting produced announcements on funding and political commitments, and it produced mixed reviews from the chiefs who attended. Some welcomed the chance to sit at the same table as the premiers for the first time in a generation. Others left skeptical that the language of partnership will translate into decisions that do not still run through Ottawa’s existing processes.
Carney told the room he would instruct his ministers to work with First Nations on moving beyond the Indian Act, either by reforming it or by replacing it. Kinew went further and said the time had come to abolish the Act outright. The Manitoba premier’s remarks drew support from some chiefs and criticism from others who argue that any replacement has to be negotiated nation by nation rather than announced from a podium in Ottawa.
The sovereign wealth fund idea is the clearest concrete item that emerged. The federal government is opening discussions on a fund that would give First Nations a direct stake in major resource projects and other long-term revenue streams. Details are thin. No target size, no governance structure, and no timeline for the first capital contribution have been released. What the meeting did was put the concept on the table in front of both the premiers and the national and regional chiefs at the same time.
For communities in the northwest the practical questions are the same ones that have sat on the table for years: whether resource projects in the region will produce durable revenue that stays in the communities that host them, and whether the decision-making process will move any faster than it has under the current framework. The fund, if it is built, is one possible answer. It is not yet an answer that can be measured in jobs, in roads, or in the size of a community’s share of a mine’s lifetime revenue.
The meeting also took place against the background of the permanent daylight-saving change that begins this weekend in the Central Time communities west of the 90th meridian. That change was driven by local surveys and by Manitoba’s own decision to stop changing clocks. It is a small example of the kind of coordination the premiers and First Nations leaders say they want more of. It is also a reminder that most of the day-to-day decisions that affect people in the northwest are still made at the municipal and First Nation level, not in Ottawa.
Chiefs left the meeting with different readings of what had been offered. Some described it as a reset. Others called it one more round of discussions that will have to be followed by legislation, by regulations, and by the ordinary work of turning a fund into money that reaches communities. The Indian Act remains in force. The sovereign wealth fund remains a discussion. The next test is whether either changes before the next winter.
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