Inside the chaotic final days of the 2025 parliamentary session, where a single omnibus bill threatened to rewrite the rules of crypto, sanctions, and Indigenous land rights.
For some reason, I'm reminded of a situation that occurred in BC a few decades ago. I didn't have direct knowledge of this; it was relayed to me by a friend.
An FN chief bought a new truck. While showing it off, he managed to crash hard enough that the truck needed extensive & expensive repairs. The dealership registered the truck before delivery to the reserve but the chief hadn't made the arrangements to have the truck insured. From memory, there is a 10 day grace period. So when the chief went to make insurance arrangements, he also decided to make an insurance claim for the repairs.
BC has a curious system called ICBC, the Insurance Corporation of BC, which started off as being just a government mandated no-fault insurance but eventually ended up being merged with the Motor Vehicle Branch for licensing drivers and registering vehicles.
ICBC declined his claim because the reserve was not part of ICBC's coverage area. The only vehicles insured on the FN were those who expected to go off the reserve onto the provincial roadways. Within the reserve, no provincial traffic laws were enforced by the choice of the FN council.
The chief found this situation unsatisfactory and declared he would bring the FN into the coverage area so he could get his truck fixed. Great idea... until the residents pointed out most people on the reserve were unlicensed drivers using uninsured vehicles on the FN and most of the vehicles would not pass vehicle safety inspections.
I moved out of the area before they resolved the situation but it looked like the chief was going to have to fix his own truck.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is the second most powerful law of the Universe next to Murphy's Law... and unlike most laws, Unintended Consequences applies equally on FN reserves.
The gap you mentioned between provincial rules and reserve realities is a constant topic in Ottawa. I was recently reading a federal committee report on Indigenous policing that highlighted this exact problem.
They called enforcement on reserves a "patchwork" system. Provincial laws often don't stick because federal funding agreements don't always cover the cost of enforcing them. It creates a legal grey zone where no one is quite sure who is in charge. Just like in your story, the rules on paper rarely match what happens on the ground. The Indian Act seems to be written in the ink of unintended consequences.
High speed rail to benefit those Canadians already well served by mass transportation options warrants the deployment of the "works for the general advantage of Canada" nuclear option, but pipelines to get energy products to tidewater do not?
Parliament used to use that power for energy projects all the time. Records show they applied it to coal mines and local railways 472 times before the 1960s. Then they abruptly stopped. It seems the government is willing to revive this authority for moving people, but not for moving oil. That marks a clear shift in what Ottawa considers a "general advantage."
The Alto high speed rail project will ultimately be a Montreal Olympics grade, intergenerational financial albatross on this country, with only a tiny proportion of the population ever using it. Meanwhile, getting oil to a deep water port would generate non-trivial monetary benefits for every Canadian.
But alas natural resources aren't sexy and the people who extract them are anglophones with dirty fingernails and pickup trucks who rarely read the Toronto Star nor lunch at the Rideau Club.
High speed rail makes sense; but perhaps it makes sense to twin the lines alongside existing rail, which probably serves the larger population centres.
That being said,Canada needs to do more than pay lip service to Indigenous rights and sovereignty,not just from a Human Rights perspective,but also from a defensive perspective. The Arctic is largely populated by Indigenous peoples, a fact that Trump tried to exploit in his quest for Greenland. People get touchy went big governments threaten their sovereignty. Canada and the Indigenous Peoples that share the land need to be unified to face the bigger threat South of the border and the threats of other large powers with ambitions in the Arctic.
For some reason, I'm reminded of a situation that occurred in BC a few decades ago. I didn't have direct knowledge of this; it was relayed to me by a friend.
An FN chief bought a new truck. While showing it off, he managed to crash hard enough that the truck needed extensive & expensive repairs. The dealership registered the truck before delivery to the reserve but the chief hadn't made the arrangements to have the truck insured. From memory, there is a 10 day grace period. So when the chief went to make insurance arrangements, he also decided to make an insurance claim for the repairs.
BC has a curious system called ICBC, the Insurance Corporation of BC, which started off as being just a government mandated no-fault insurance but eventually ended up being merged with the Motor Vehicle Branch for licensing drivers and registering vehicles.
ICBC declined his claim because the reserve was not part of ICBC's coverage area. The only vehicles insured on the FN were those who expected to go off the reserve onto the provincial roadways. Within the reserve, no provincial traffic laws were enforced by the choice of the FN council.
The chief found this situation unsatisfactory and declared he would bring the FN into the coverage area so he could get his truck fixed. Great idea... until the residents pointed out most people on the reserve were unlicensed drivers using uninsured vehicles on the FN and most of the vehicles would not pass vehicle safety inspections.
I moved out of the area before they resolved the situation but it looked like the chief was going to have to fix his own truck.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is the second most powerful law of the Universe next to Murphy's Law... and unlike most laws, Unintended Consequences applies equally on FN reserves.
The gap you mentioned between provincial rules and reserve realities is a constant topic in Ottawa. I was recently reading a federal committee report on Indigenous policing that highlighted this exact problem.
They called enforcement on reserves a "patchwork" system. Provincial laws often don't stick because federal funding agreements don't always cover the cost of enforcing them. It creates a legal grey zone where no one is quite sure who is in charge. Just like in your story, the rules on paper rarely match what happens on the ground. The Indian Act seems to be written in the ink of unintended consequences.
High speed rail to benefit those Canadians already well served by mass transportation options warrants the deployment of the "works for the general advantage of Canada" nuclear option, but pipelines to get energy products to tidewater do not?
Parliament used to use that power for energy projects all the time. Records show they applied it to coal mines and local railways 472 times before the 1960s. Then they abruptly stopped. It seems the government is willing to revive this authority for moving people, but not for moving oil. That marks a clear shift in what Ottawa considers a "general advantage."
The Alto high speed rail project will ultimately be a Montreal Olympics grade, intergenerational financial albatross on this country, with only a tiny proportion of the population ever using it. Meanwhile, getting oil to a deep water port would generate non-trivial monetary benefits for every Canadian.
But alas natural resources aren't sexy and the people who extract them are anglophones with dirty fingernails and pickup trucks who rarely read the Toronto Star nor lunch at the Rideau Club.
High speed rail makes sense; but perhaps it makes sense to twin the lines alongside existing rail, which probably serves the larger population centres.
That being said,Canada needs to do more than pay lip service to Indigenous rights and sovereignty,not just from a Human Rights perspective,but also from a defensive perspective. The Arctic is largely populated by Indigenous peoples, a fact that Trump tried to exploit in his quest for Greenland. People get touchy went big governments threaten their sovereignty. Canada and the Indigenous Peoples that share the land need to be unified to face the bigger threat South of the border and the threats of other large powers with ambitions in the Arctic.