What Ottawa’s own playbook teaches First Nations about moving beyond the Indian Act
On October 26, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew stepped out of the First Nations–First Ministers meeting in Ottawa, held up his status card, and said it plainly: “It’s time to abolish the Indian Act.”1 Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “very open” to the idea, but added that moving beyond the Act could mean reform rather than repeal, and would only happen in partnership with First Nations.2 The next day he said a review might not end in abolition at all.3 By the following week, AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak was disputing that chiefs in the room had raised abolition.4
That back-and-forth tells us something. A 150-year-old statute will not disappear because a premier calls for it, and it should not disappear because Ottawa decides it should. Our people remember 1969, when the federal White Paper proposed to abolish the Act and Indian status in one stroke: termination dressed up as equality. First Nations rejected it then, for good reason. Our rights did not come from the Indian Act, and they will not leave with it.
The most durable way to move beyond the Indian Act isn’t a bill in Parliament. It’s a balance sheet.
The Act’s real power is dependency
Strip away the registry and the reserve-land rules, and the Indian Act’s day-to-day grip is financial. When most of a Nation’s revenue arrives as a federal transfer, that Nation’s priorities are written in someone else’s terms and conditions. Every Nation that earns more than it receives has already moved beyond the Act in the way that matters most: it can say no. In finance there is a blunt name for that — walk-away money. It isn’t defiance. It is the ability to negotiate from strength instead of need.
That is what Sklow Analytics exists to measure and to build. And over the past eighteen months, the Prime Minister has been running a playbook for national self-reliance that First Nations can read line by line.
1. Diversify who you depend on
More than 75 percent of Canada’s exports go to the United States.5 When that relationship turned coercive, Carney didn’t just protest; he went looking for other customers. In six months Canada signed a dozen trade and security agreements across four continents,6 including an economic partnership with Indonesia7 and, last month, a comprehensive agreement with the United Arab Emirates.8
The economist Albert Hirschman described this dynamic in 1945: when one party depends on a relationship far more than the other does, that imbalance becomes a source of power for the less dependent side.9 Swap “Canada” for “First Nation” and “the United States” for “Indigenous Services Canada,” and you have the fiscal reality of most of our communities. The lesson is the same: build own-source revenue from many places — land and resource agreements, equity stakes, business partnerships, alliances with other Nations — so that no single payer holds the pen for your Nation.
2. Bring in capital, and make it work harder
Budget 2025 set out to catalyze $500 billion in private-sector investment.10 Ottawa’s logic is that public dollars are seed money; the goal is to pull far more private capital in behind them and lift productivity.
First Nations already do this through equity ownership in major projects and borrowing through our own institutions. At the October meeting, Carney committed to amending the First Nations Fiscal Management Act,2 the law that lets participating Nations levy taxes, manage their finances, and access financing through First Nations-led institutions.11 Every Nation that can raise capital on its own credit is a Nation writing its own terms. The productivity test follows directly: is each dollar of investment raising own-source revenue per member?
3. Separate operating from investment
First Nations already know this discipline well. Many Nations keep their governments and their businesses apart: the band office runs programs and services, often on transfer funding, while an arm’s-length economic development corporation holds the Nation’s business interests and is managed for returns. That separation keeps politics out of investment decisions, puts professional boards in charge of commercial risk, shields the Nation from business liabilities, and lets profits be reinvested to compound over time rather than spent in the current budget year. It is how many Nations are building intergenerational wealth: assets that serve members today and the generations still to come. In that sense, Ottawa’s new capital budget is catching up to a model many First Nations have run for decades. The question for every Nation is the same one Ottawa now faces: is the investment side actually producing returns, or just carrying costs that belong in operations?
There is a caution here worth taking seriously. The current Parliamentary Budget Officer found Ottawa’s definition of “capital” overly broad: under conventional measures, capital spending is roughly 30 percent lower than the budget claims, and the operating budget stays in deficit.14 The lesson for us is that a capital budget is only as honest as its definition of investment. If it doesn’t produce a return, it is operating spending with a better label.
4. Measure progress, in public
Carney’s framework gives Canadians a clear test of whether government spending is building something. First Nations deserve the same clarity about their own trajectory. That is why Sklow built the Self-Determination Ratio, where 1.0 marks the threshold of fiscal self-determination.
When we ran it across all 17 Secwépemc communities earlier this year, the aggregate ratio was
0.85. Fourteen of 17 sat below 1.0; three — Skeetchestn (1.02), Whispering Pines (1.23) and Simpcw (5.62) — sat above it. And every one of the 17 ran a surplus.15
Read that carefully. A surplus is not independence. A Nation can balance its books and still depend on Ottawa for most of its revenue. The ratio tells you which side of the line you are on, and which way you are moving.
5. Say the word sovereignty — and mean money
After his Davos speech in January, Carney told Canadians that “we are masters in our home” and that the country’s future is its own to choose.16 Notice that his sovereignty argument is economic first: trade, investment, building things. Political sovereignty without financial sovereignty is a speech. Financial sovereignty is what makes the speech credible.
6. The same lesson applies in Victoria
The pressure isn’t only federal. B.C.’s premier-designate, Lorne Doerkson, made repealing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act his top priority, telling reporters during the campaign, “I will repeal DRIPA.”17 First Nations leaders have warned there will be repercussions if he follows through.18
DRIPA is worth defending, and Nations will defend it. But the fight shows the same thing the Indian Act debate shows: rights recognized in one government’s statute can be stripped out by the next. What a new government cannot repeal is an economy. A Nation whose revenue comes mainly from its own businesses, equity stakes and tax base is not waiting on provincial transfers or Victoria’s goodwill. And a province that needs First Nations as owners and partners in its mines, pipelines, forests and housing cannot afford to stop listening to them. Legislation recognizes our authority; economic weight makes it impossible to ignore.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to lead. Every Nation that moves its ratio above 1.0 is a Nation the province has to negotiate with, whoever holds the premier’s office.
What this means for the Indian Act debate
Reform or repeal, the debate in Ottawa will take years, and the debate in Victoria is just starting. Nations do not need to wait for either. Every point a Nation moves its ratio toward and above 1.0 is ground taken back from the Act — not by asking permission, but by needing it less. And when the legislative conversation does arrive, Nations that can show their own numbers will be at the table as governments, not as program recipients.
That is the work: data-informed decisions, measured in public, building economies that answer to our own people. Masters of our own destiny isn’t only Ottawa’s line. It was ours first.
Carl Archie | tlli7sa | Sklow Analytics | Secwépemc Economist & Governance Advisor
NOTES
1. The Canadian Press, “Kinew Tells Carney to Abolish the Indian Act at Meeting with Chiefs,” CP24, October 26, 2026, https:// www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/10/26/kinew-tells-carney-to-abolish-the-indian-act-at-meeting-with-chiefs/.
2. The Canadian Press, “PM Carney Says It’s Time to Move beyond Indian Act,” CP24, October 26, 2026, https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/10/26/pm-carney-says-its-time-to-move-beyond-indian-act/.
3. The Canadian Press, “Carney Says Ottawa’s Indian Act Review Might Not End Up Abolishing the Law,” CP24, October 27, 2026, https://www.cp24.com/politics/2026/10/27/carney-says-ottawas-indian-act-review-might-not-end-up-abolishi ng-the-law/.
4. The Canadian Press, “AFN Chief Says No One besides Carney, Kinew Talked about Abolishing Indian Act,” CTV News, November 3, 2026, https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/afn-chief-says-no-one-besides-carney-kinew-talked-ab out-abolishing-indian-act/.
5. Associated Press, “Carney Meant What He Said in Davos,” Fortune, January 28, 2026, https://www.fortune.com/2026/01/28/carney-meant-what-he-said-in-davos-splitting-with-america-new-trade-deals.
6. Miriam Mathew, “A New Year’s Resolution on Canadian Trade,” Global Public Affairs, February 10, 2026, https://globalpublicaffairs.ca/?p=4173.
7. “Mark Carney’s 26 Trips Abroad: A Breakdown of the Prime Minister’s Trade Deals and Travel after 1 Year in Office,” The Hub, March 11, 2026, https://thehub.ca/2026/03/11/mark-carneys-26-trips-abroad-a-breakdown-of-the-prime-ministe rs-trade-deals-after-1-year-in-office/.
8. Reuters, “Canada, UAE Sign Major Trade Deal amid Tensions with US,” Daily Sabah, October 27, 2026, https://www.dailysabah.com/business/economy/canada-uae-sign-major-trade-deal-amid-tensions-with-us.
9. Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945).
10. Sherry Cooper, “Canadian Federal Budget Revamp,” Dominion Lending Centres, November 4, 2025, https://dominionlending.ca/economic-insights/canadian-federal-budget-revamp.
11. First Nations Fiscal Management Act, S.C. 2005, c. 9, https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-11.67/.
12. Temple Scott Associates, “Budget 2025,” November 4, 2025, https://www.tsa.ca/budget-2025/.
13. Kevin Page, “The Carney Government’s Changes to Federal Budgeting,” Policy Magazine, October 6, 2025, https://www.policymagazine.ca/the-carney-governments-changes-to-federal-budgeting/.
14. Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “PBO Slices through Carney’s Creative Accounting,” news release, November 14, 2025, https://www.taxpayer.com/newsroom/pbo-slices-through-carney’s-creative-accounting (reporting the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s November 14, 2025 analysis of Budget 2025).
15. Sklow Analytics, “Secwépemc Regional Financial Snapshot: Self-Determination Ratio,” briefing note, June 2026.
16. Associated Press, “Canada’s Carney Fires Back at Trump after Davos Speech,” WTOP, January 22, 2026, https://wtop.com/world/2026/01/canadas-carney-fires-back-at-trump-after-davos-speech/.
17. Shannon Waters, “B.C.’s Indigenous Rights Law Is Now an Election Issue. Here’s What You Need to Know,” The Narwhal, October 7, 2026, https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-election-2026-dripa/.
18. “Volatile Situation Brewing, First Nations Leader Warns B.C.’s Incoming Premier,” CTV News, October 26, 2026, https://ww w.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/volatile-situation-brewing-first-nations-leader-warns-bcs-incoming-premier/.
