A southern Alberta First Nation is battling the federal government for the right to control its own oil and gas royalties.
The Bearspaw First Nation is demanding that Ottawa no longer collect any money on its behalf and return about $50 million collected from oilpatch activity on its traditional territory.
The band alleges the government is doing a poor job of investing the savings and won’t release the funds because of Ottawa’s mistrust of First Nations to properly handle money.
The federal government has had control of band money since the late 19th century and acted as trustee of any energy royalties earned by First Nations. To this day, the government also holds on to money earned from other sources, such as the sale of land, timber and gravel.
A few other First Nations in Western Canada have succeeded in withdrawing all of their funds from the federal government, but the process has always been challenging and in one case took 16 years of legal wrangling.
The Bearspaw not only wants to access all of its funds but ensure that future revenues go straight to the First Nation. The band council wants to set up its own trust fund, which it expects will earn much more interest.
“We’re not asking for handouts. All we’re asking is to manage money that belongs to us,” Chief Darcy Dixon said in an interview.
“Today, they’re still saying, ‘Hey look, folks. You can’t look after your money. You can’t do better than we can.'”
If the First Nation wanted to withdraw a few million dollars for a housing project, it would be easy to do, Dixon said, but to take control of the entire fund is proving to be “impossible.”
Other First Nations get control of money
Bearspaw leaders say they were told by Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) on June 3, 2020, that the government would transfer all of the money to the First Nation, but the transaction still hasn’t taken place.
Dixon wrote a letter this month directly to Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller, urging the government to “immediately take the steps required to truly respect your commitments to us in and to proceed without further delay.”
In an emailed response to CBC News, an ISC official said the department could not comment on dealings with the Bearspaw First Nation because of confidentiality.
WATCH | How the Bearspaw First Nation spends some of its oil and gas royalties:
Bearspaw Chief Darcy Dixon says the community’s savings help subside programs and provide care for elders. 1:31
“We are committed to working collaboratively with First Nations interested in managing their trust moneys. This includes working with the Bearspaw First Nation to support their goals for their respective trust funds,” ISC spokesperson Danielle Geary said in the email.
There was no response to an interview request with Miller.
The Samson Cree Nation, located about 100 kilometres south of Edmonton, launched a legal battle against Ottawa to gain access to its money in 1989 and was eventually victorious in 2005. The following year, the federal government transferred $349 million into the First Nation’s newly created Kisoniyaminaw Heritage Trust Fund.
At the beginning of 2017, the fund had a balance of $456 million, while $202 million had been withdrawn by the Samson Cree.
Withdrawing all of its oil and gas royalties and self-managing the money had never been done before by a First Nation in Canada.
“The federal government fought tooth and nail. They spent millions and millions of dollars to prove that they were right and to really force the colonialism that we couldn’t take care of our own money,” said Stephen Buffalo, the son of former Samson chief Victor Buffalo.
Stephen Buffalo is the son of a former chief of Alberta’s Samson Cree Nation, which launched a legal battle against Ottawa to gain access to its money in 1989 and was eventually victorious in 2005. He’s optimistic that the Bearspaw First Nation will be successful in being able to manage its savings. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
Among other accolades, Victor Buffalo was invested into the Order of Canada for his instrumental role in the Samson gaining control of its natural resource revenues.
Since then, the Ermineskin Cree Nation, located next to Samson, and the Onion Lake Cree Nation, which straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, have both set up their own trust funds after many years of delays working with the federal government.
The Ermineskin trust was established in 2011 with $123 million, and it has now earned $214 million more compared with the amount that would have been paid by the federal government if the First Nation had left the money under Ottawa’s control, according to the fund’s 2020 annual report.
Since inception, the fund’s annualized rate of return is 10 per cent, compared with 2.17 per cent if the money had been left under government oversight.
Onion Lake’s fund began in 2016 with more than $44 million after what it calls a “long and difficult struggle” to gain control of its own money. Since then, the trust has paid out $59 million to the First Nation and has a balance of just over $37 million. The annualized rate of return is nearly 11 per cent.
All three First Nations initiated legal action in their efforts to take control of their money from Ottawa.
‘Canada should be transparent’
“It’s really sad that the federal government thinks that we couldn’t manage this ourselves,” said Stephen Buffalo, who is optimistic that the Bearspaw First Nation will be successful in being able to manage its savings.
“If the precedent is set for this circumstance to take control of your own oil and gas revenue money, I think they just have to move forward,” said Buffalo, who is president of the Calgary-based Indian Resource Council, which represents First Nations that have oil and gas production — or potential production — on their land.
The Bearspaw First Nation promotes its proposed trust fund on a billboard along the Trans-Canada Highway west of Calgary. A few other First Nations in Western Canada have succeeded in withdrawing all of their funds from the federal government after taking legal action. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
The Bearspaw is one of three bands that make up the Stoney Nakoda Nation. Last year, each band passed a resolution allowing the Bearspaw to withdraw its per-capita share of the money the federal government was holding for the Stoney Nakoda Nation.
“Canada should be transparent about why they’re delaying or why they can’t hand over control over capital,” said Brad Bryan, an assistant professor in the law faculty at the University of Victoria who teaches and researches First Nation fiscal relations.
The current financial arrangement with Ottawa is similar to having to ask your parents in advance for every dollar that you spend, he said.
Any financial abuses by First Nation members are limited and rare, Bryan said.
“In my experience, when I have been working as a lawyer in communities, I found the level of financial literacy among members — and not just council members — to be extremely high,” he said.
In 2017, the National Indigenous Economic Development Board — which provides strategic policy advice to Ottawa on Indigenous economic development — produced a report about the issue at the request of the standing Senate committee on aboriginal peoples.
Among its recommendations, the board said the federal government should “make every effort to work with First Nations and First Nation institutions to overcome internal policy and legislative barriers that impede First Nation control over Indian moneys.”
The report said Ottawa should use the guiding principle: “Indian moneys should be in the hands of First Nations, not the Government of Canada.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
