no representation without taxation!

It is curious that the reverse of the above phrase was enough to send crates of tea careening into Boston Harbour, defeat an empire and become a basic maxim of responsible government, but that its equally axiomatic partner receives such scant attention.

I find it to be screamingly obvious that a government with a legitimate claim to be representative of a given polity, must draw both its legitimacy and resources from said polity. The citizens, who grant their government both its legitimacy and resources with which to represent, and act in, their interests, have a definite stake in the conduct of the government, since it is their resources being put to use. In short, taxation is a critical element in making a government accountable to its citizens. It is no great surprise that the roster of successful nations is populated by states run on the basis of "no taxation without representation" and vice-versa.

Ever since the landmark "White Paper" on Indian Affairs was quashed in 1968, Canadian aboriginal policy has been guided by the idea that each First Nation is in fact a self-governing entity, and that relations between Ottawa and the various Band Councils should be conducted on a nation to nation basis. Aside from puffing up the egos of the Band Councils, who could now fancy themselves "national representatives," it is hard to see how this model has benefited aboriginal Canadians.

The key problem with aboriginal self-government is that the lines of accountability all run in the wrong directions. Band Councils are not accountable to their members, but to Ottawa, the source of all of their funding. Councils do not have to justify how they allocate resources to their citizens, since the citizens do not provide the resources in question. Thus, there is no built-in incentive to manage these resources carefully, since more can always be acquired at no political cost to the Council and no actual cost to the members. The best that can be done is a series of onerous accountability checks imposed by Ottawa, which tend to only serve to enrich consultants and distract the Band Council from the more fundamental issues of governance. Finally, whenever something goes wrong, there is a convenient scapegoat at hand, as evidenced by the Kashechewan debacle:

Chief Leo Friday said the band will not accept responsibility for the water plant's deterioration and did not have money to properly maintain it.

Despite the fact that a report on the water crisis identified the following:

• Use of sub-standard chemicals to disinfect water that are barred from use in Ontario-run facilities;
• Cross-connections between pipes carrying clean water and raw sewage;
• No mandatory facility inspections; and,
• No manuals on site to help under-trained water operators understand how to do their jobs.

Problems, which sadly are not nearly as ridiculous as:

In an interview earlier this month, both Wesley and Wynne [the plant operators] said they knew they didn't have enough training to keep water clean at the plant. They said neither had seen a booklet of step-by-step instructions the band received in 2003 on how to prevent the reserve's problem-plagued sewage lagoons from overflowing into Red Willow Creek, above the drinking water intake pipe. When an alarm system set up to warn them of chlorine problems broke five years ago, Wesley said he shut it off and never asked band officials to have it repaired.

Here's Chief Leo again to sum things up, "Sometimes [the water plant] goes off for three days and comes on for another day," he said. "We can't charge people fees ... nobody wants to pay for water that is not functioning well." Was the water plant never functioning well? Were fees or taxes considered immediately after the present plant was constructed and presumably functioning properly? Then again, what's the point of maintaining the existing facility if Ottawa can be persuaded, or shamed, into building you a new one anyway?

Can you imagine a municipal mayor behaving in a similar fashion in light of such a massive failure in his sphere of responsibility? The electorate would not stand for it. Of course, the representative municipal system also allows for the mayor to raise the funds necessary to avoid such catastrophes by justifying preventative spending, and the accompanying taxation, to the electorate. If the voters want clean water, they have to pay for it. Simple, right? Sadly, none of the basic logic of representative governance applies to the alternate universe of aboriginal self-government (where Chief Friday is now lauded as a great hero). The results speak for themselves.

The recent photo-op, I mean summit, on aboriginal affairs in Kelowna, British Columbia did nothing to address the fundamental flaw at the heart of aboriginal self-government. In fact, the parties decided to walk even further down the same path, studiously ignoring the wrecks on the side of the road. Apparently First Nations will now be responsible for running their own separate school boards, funded by Ottawa. I would like to think that these boards will achieve better results than the water operators did, but am not hopeful.

A guest on CBC's "The House" this morning made the excellent point that the leaders of the AFN, the various regional aboriginal organizations and the Band Councils themselves are all in effect employees of the Federal government. After all, the government pays their wages and all of their programming costs through a series of grants and transfers. Given that, one has to wonder who's interests are being represented?

"No taxation without representation," will, and should, remain the battle call of the rebel. But, as it has been shown, representation without taxation is no real representation at all.

Afterward

In one of his typical meandering paeans to big government, big labour and big taxes, Jim Stanford made the novel argument that the government is not "throwing money" at aboriginals, but has instead underpaid. His numbers are hidden behind a subscriber wall, but his point was that the total value of government services (federal, provincial and municipal) received by non-aboriginals, exceeds that of spending on aboriginals, on a per capita basis. Stanford, of course, neglected to mention that status Indians do not pay taxes, thus the net value of the government services they receive dwarfs that of non-aboriginal Canadians.

Let us for a second, indulge the Martins, Stanfords, Leo Fridays and Fontaines of this debate, and assume that money is the problem, and that more of it will lead to better results. I present to them, exhibit A, Hobbema, Alberta:

Hobbema sits atop oil deposits that bring in millions of dollars. Trust funds have been set up for the young people on the reserves. At one time, when a person turned 18, they received a windfall of $100,000, but revenues have fallen and so have the amounts paid out.

"Now it's $30,000 or $40,000," Mr. Buffalo said. "I've heard people spend that in three or four days..."

"...You'd think with all the money there wouldn't be a problem," added Mr. Buffalo, who is also president of the Indian Association of Alberta. "But it just goes to show you that money doesn't solve the problem."