Indigenous
Canada’s Indigenous Model is Not Sustainable

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
The stated purpose of the extra indigenous spending that has always been there, and the virtual explosion on indigenous spending since 2015 is meant to fix that problem. But these massive expenditures have now reached the point where they risk destabilizing the country.
Canada’s parliamentary budget officer, Yves Giroux has spoken out about the alarming rise in Canada’s contingent liabilities related to indigenous claims. Todays estimated 76 billion dollars is many times the 15 billion dollars it was when the Liberals took power in 2015.
This is one part only of the massive increase in spending on indigenous matters that has taken place since then.
Federal spending per indigenous person has always been much higher than spending per non-indigenous person. The higher level of spending has been justified because most indigenous people do much worse on virtually every health and social indicator than the mainstream population. Their health is poorer, and their lives are shorter.
This disparity was generally known as Canada’s “Indian problem”. That term is no longer fashionable, and the extra spending is now said to be necessary to achieve “reconciliation”. Regardless of the terms, what is clear is that since Confederation there has always existed a large rural and urban indigenous underclass that does poorly compared to the mainstream. The stated purpose of the extra indigenous spending that has always been there, and the virtual explosion on indigenous spending since 2015 is meant to fix that problem. But these massive expenditures have now reached the point where they risk destabilizing the country.
Perhaps it’s time for Canadians to ask if the “nation to nation” reconciliation plan that spending is based on is working. Is it fixing the problem?
A recent CBC report proves that it is not. Instead, the problems are getting worse.
The CBC investigated an indigenous community at St. Theresa Point where 24 people sometime share one house. Almost all of the houses in the community are crumbling and need to be replaced. Families struggle to achieve basic hygiene. Living conditions resemble what one would expect to find in a third world community, and not in wealthy, modern Canada.
St. Theresa Point is typical of hundreds of other Indian remote reserves. Most are almost totally dependent on the federal government for their survival. There is virtually no real employment. The poorest people in those communities are directly dependent on welfare checks, but even the chief, councillors and other employees receive their paycheques from the transfer payments sent by Ottawa. In reality almost everyone in the community is on welfare of some type.
Unlike in other rural communities, people on poor reserves tend not to move when economic opportunities decline. In small-town Canada, the rules are simple: If the towns or farms can’t supply enough jobs, one moves to the city where the jobs and careers are. But on remote reserves, most people stay put, even if there are no jobs or careers there for them. And most of those who do move to the city do not do well. A lack of education, poor job skills, and lack of motivation usually consign reserve residents who move to the mean parts of town where many end up in gangs, crime and prostitution. The result is that the people who stay in uneconomic remote reserves become more and more dependent. Low education levels sink even further. And succeeding generations become ever less likely to be able to provide for themselves and their families.
To make matters much worse, addiction problems are endemic. At one time, alcohol was the drug of choice. Now, amphetamines, fentanyl, and prescription drugs have been added to the list, with the family violence, sexual abuse, crime, teenage pregnancy and fetal alcohol births that inevitably follow from chronic drug use.
And reserve populations are growing. Although status Indians living on reserves currently comprise only about 1% of the total population, they are the country’s fastest growing demographic. The cost of operating these communities is crippling now, but in a few years, it will be completely unsustainable. Pretending that these desperately poor reserves are sovereign “nations” that will somehow magically become prosperous and self-supporting is a cruel joke on the young people hopelessly trapped on them. The prospect of hundreds of dependent reserves teeming with, unemployed, and largely unemployable young people, with massive social problems, is a frightening dystopia – hundreds of Gaza strips. But it is where we are headed. To make things even worse, the government-promoted false genocide and “missing children” narratives have made many of these people very angry.
Although there is no treaty right, or any other right to free housing on a reserve the reality is that if the government did not provide housing for the reserve residents, they would be unable to provide housing for themselves. The strange result is that Canadian taxpayers – many of whom will never be able to afford to buy a house themselves – pay through their tax dollars for houses for the rapidly growing reserve population. These houses deteriorate quickly, because they are considered “free” by the residents, and have to be fixed and replaced in a wasteful and expensive cycle.
And it is a national disgrace that most reserves are dead ends for most of the young people born into them.
The late Farley Mowat described northern indigenous settlements as “unguarded concentration camps”. That might be a somewhat harsh way to describe reserves, but at best most are human warehouses, plagued with social problems. The young people living there deserve some hope, and Canada’s current plan for them offers them none.
So, Canada’s current indigenous plan is clearly not working. Is there a better plan for success?
Maybe we should ask Wab Kinew, Manitoba’s new premier. He is indigenous and highly successful. How did he get there?
The formula is actually not complicated. It has nothing to do with massive welfare giveaways, “nation to nation” utopias, or incredibly expensive “reconciliation” projects. It definitely has nothing to do with staying in a community that lacks economic opportunities, and waiting for handouts. It involves education, hard work, and going where the jobs are. Kinew’s parents realized that a stable home and education were key. Wab did the rest. He worked his way up the ladder in the usual way, and went where the jobs were. He did that with his indigenous identity intact.
Not every young person has Kinew’s talent, but everyone can follow the formula that made Kinew, and many other indigenous achievers successful.
The alternative – spending ever increasing amounts on a steadily increasing list of demands from a growing dependent reserve population is not an option. We don’t need the parliamentary budget officer to tell us that it is not sustainable.
As for remote, uneconomic reserves, like St. Theresa Point, they should be gradually and humanely closed down. It has been recognized for many years that reserves long ago had served their purpose, and should be phased out. As far back as 1911, it was said:
“Department officials were increasingly coming to the view that reserves had outlived their usefulness. Frank Pedley suggested that they resulted in the isolation and segregation of Indians, and thereby hindered progress…and encouraged the tribal form of government.”
The reserve system was not ended in 1911 because the chiefs and ruling families refused to give up their privileged positions. It isn’t happening today for the same reasons. We still have the same Indian Act and reserve system that has held indigenous people back for almost 150 years. (Senior Ontario lawyer, Peter Best, describes the toxicity of the reserve system in his important book, There Is No Difference)
So, the long-term plan should be to find a way to overcome that resistance, and find a fair way to phase out reserves, and the antiquated Indian Act. The reserves that are economically viable can merge into existing rural municipalities, or become stand-alone municipalities. Opportunities should be made available for young people from uneconomic communities to move to job centres, and receive help to succeed there.
In the meantime, the example of Wab Kinew is proof that there has never been a better time or place than today’s Canada to be an educated and ambitious young indigenous person who is willing to study, work hard, and go where the jobs are.
Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and senior fellow at Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Watch Brian on Return to Reason here.
Canadian Energy Centre
Saskatchewan Indigenous leaders urging need for access to natural gas

Piapot First Nation near Regina, Saskatchewan. Photo courtesy Piapot First Nation/Facebook
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Cody Ciona and Deborah Jaremko
“Come to my nation and see how my people are living, and the struggles that they have day to day out here because of the high cost of energy, of electric heat and propane.”
Indigenous communities across Canada need access to natural gas to reduce energy poverty, says a new report by Energy for a Secure Future (ESF).
It’s a serious issue that needs to be addressed, say Indigenous community and business leaders in Saskatchewan.
“We’re here today to implore upon the federal government that we need the installation of natural gas and access to natural gas so that we can have safe and reliable service,” said Guy Lonechild, CEO of the Regina-based First Nations Power Authority, on a March 11 ESF webinar.
Last year, 20 Saskatchewan communities moved a resolution at the Assembly of First Nations’ annual general assembly calling on the federal government to “immediately enhance” First Nations financial supports for “more desirable energy security measures such as natural gas for home heating.”
“We’ve been calling it heat poverty because that’s what it really is…our families are finding that they have to either choose between buying groceries or heating their home,” Chief Christine Longjohn of Sturgeon Lake First Nation said in the ESF report.
“We should be able to live comfortably within our homes. We want to be just like every other homeowner that has that choice to be able to use natural gas.”
At least 333 First Nations communities across Canada are not connected to natural gas utilities, according to the Canada Energy Regulator (CER).
ESF says that while there are many federal programs that help cover the upfront costs of accessing electricity, primarily from renewable sources, there are no comparable ones to support natural gas access.
“Most Canadian and Indigenous communities support actions to address climate change. However, the policy priority of reducing fossil fuel use has had unintended consequences,” the ESF report said.
“Recent funding support has been directed not at improving reliability or affordability of the energy, but rather at sustainability.”
Natural gas costs less than half — or even a quarter — of electricity prices in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, according to CER data.
“Natural gas is something NRCan [Natural Resources Canada] will not fund. It’s not considered a renewable for them,” said Chief Mark Fox of the Piapot First Nation, located about 50 kilometres northeast of Regina.
“Come to my nation and see how my people are living, and the struggles that they have day to day out here because of the high cost of energy, of electric heat and propane.”
According to ESF, some Indigenous communities compare the challenge of natural gas access to the multiyear effort to raise awareness and, ultimately funding, to address poor water quality and access on reserve.
“Natural gas is the new water,” Lonechild said.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
John Rustad’s Residential School Claim Is False And Dangerous

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
When politicians misrepresent facts or historical events, whether out of ignorance or political expediency, they do a disservice to the truth and public trust. On Feb. 24, 2025, B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad reportedly told Global News that “more than 4,000 children did not return home” from residential schools because “those children died in residential schools.” As researcher Nina Green points out, this statement is demonstrably false and contradicts the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report.
Sadly, Rustad is not the only one making such claims. Similar statements, portrayed as facts, are repeated by politicians who should know better.
The truth, according to the TRC, is that 423 named children died on the premises of residential schools between 1867 and 2000. That is a tragedy, and we must expand our understanding of how and why these deaths occurred. To learn from tragedies, we must acknowledge and reflect on them. But to truly understand, we must accept what is true rather than bending or distorting it. Repeating the claim that “more than 4,000” children died in residential schools, as Rustad and others have uncritically reported, misrepresents reality.
The vastly inflated number, according to Green, originates from the University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), which has misrepresented the data by including children who died after leaving school—in hospitals, in accidents at home, and even well into adulthood. This distortion has led to widespread misrepresentation, misleading policymakers and the public.
Why does this matter?
Canada’s history with Indigenous residential schools is deeply painful. Abuses, neglect and forced assimilation were real in many instances. However, distorting the facts about residential school deaths promotes a false narrative of genocide that does not serve justice—in fact, this false narrative undermines it. If reconciliation means anything, it must be built on truth, not contrived political narratives.
By repeating the claim that more than 4,000 children died at residential schools, Rustad is spreading falsehoods and stoking division. This figure has been used to justify claims of mass graves, leading to international headlines and widespread outrage that harm present generations of Indigenous people. Yet, nearly four years after the first claims of unmarked graves, no remains have been excavated or verified.
Rustad is not a private citizen—he is a public figure whose words carry weight. As such, he is responsible for ensuring that the information he disseminates is accurate. Rustad is failing in his duty to the public. Depending on his motivation, he contributes to a culture in which historical accuracy is sacrificed for political expediency.
Some may argue that the exact number of students who died at residential schools is not important. But truth is not negotiable. If we accept exaggerated claims in one instance, we set a dangerous pattern for historical distortions. The truth should not be ideological or political.
If Rustad is serious about Indigenous issues, he should demand transparency from the University of Manitoba and its NCTR. Instead of accepting misleading figures, he should call for the full release of the TRC records, as was promised in 2013.
Leaders like Rustad must be held accountable. Falsehoods, no matter how well-intentioned, do not advance reconciliation. They erode trust, divide Canadians, and ultimately undermine the cause they claim to support. All Canadians deserve much better.
Marco Navarro-Genie is the vice president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. With Barry Cooper, he is coauthor of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
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