Kinew and Carney have opened the door to reforms Frontier has advocated for nearly three decades
WINNIPEG – The Frontier Centre for Public Policy says Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s call to abolish the Indian Act and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s willingness to consider the proposal represent an important opportunity to reform legislation the think tank has criticized for nearly three decades.
Speaking Monday at a meeting in Ottawa with the prime minister, premiers and chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations, Kinew held up his own status card and said Canada should no longer have a “race-based form of identification.”
“It’s time to abolish the Indian Act,” he told reporters. That evening, he described it as “outdated, racist, and patriarchal legislation.”
Carney replied that he is “very open” to abolishing the Act and, speaking in French, called it racist. On Tuesday, he added that Ottawa’s review has no “fixed conclusion” and that the federal government will work with First Nations and the provinces to consider possible replacements.
Frontier has long argued that the Indian Act perpetuates unequal treatment by assigning legal status and governing important aspects of First Nations life through a system based on ancestry. The Centre maintains that meaningful reconciliation requires replacing that system with arrangements that respect Aboriginal and treaty rights while expanding economic opportunity and self-government.
Frontier’s founding president, Peter Holle, has kept the question at the forefront of the Centre’s work since its earliest years. In a 2001 column, Archaic Indian Act Is Behind Native Poverty, he argued that the Act’s restrictions on property and commercial credit kept reserve residents from building wealth.
“When we started, saying the Indian Act should go was enough to get you called names,” said Holle. “We said it anyway because the evidence, and many of the people living under the Act, told us it was true. It is gratifying to hear a premier and a prime minister say it. Now the words need to become law.”
Over the years, Frontier authors, including Dennis Owens, Don Sandberg, Joseph Quesnel, Tom Flanagan, Lee Harding, Sheilla Jones, Brian Giesbrecht and Peter Best, have produced research papers, governance indexes, legislative proposals and commentary examining alternatives to the Indian Act. Their work has addressed property rights, economic development, accountability and First Nations governance, many of the issues that would have to be considered in any effort to replace the legislation.
The Centre’s archive contains hundreds of items on the subject spanning nearly three decades. To make that research more accessible to journalists, legislators and the public, Frontier has selected 12 studies and commentaries, of which three illustrate the range of its work:
The Search for Aboriginal Property Rights, by Dennis Owens (2000). One of Frontier’s earliest substantial studies examined how insecure property rights under the Act restricted business, housing, farming and capital formation on reserves.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective First Nations, by Tom Flanagan and Lee Harding (2016). A study of 21 First Nations with relatively high well-being scores, identifying common practices including stable governance, sound financial management, usable property rights and own-source revenue.
The ‘Zero-in-Ten’ Plan: Ending the Indian Act and Reserve System, by Joseph Quesnel (2020). A proposed 10-year transition away from the Indian Act and reserve system while protecting Aboriginal and treaty rights.
“This is a rare opportunity for Canada to move beyond decades of debate and begin replacing a system that has limited economic opportunity and self-government for generations,” said David Leis, president and CEO of the Frontier Centre. “The transition will be difficult and must respect Aboriginal and treaty rights. But reconciliation should mean giving First Nations greater control over their own futures, not perpetuating federal control through outdated legislation.”
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David Leis
President and CEO
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
[email protected]
About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent Canadian think tank that conducts research and analysis on public policy issues, including energy, economics, governance and Indigenous policy.
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