The Kraemenator

Why is it that aboriginals seem to get a lot more things from the government than I do?  I’m a Canadian citizen, born and raised in Canada, same as any aboriginal, yet I still have to pay my taxes, my post secondary education and unless I buy it myself, there is no land that is specifically reserved for me.  Is the government trying to say that First Nations are better than me and every other citizen of Canada?  I understand that the Europeans weren’t exactly nice and accommodating to the First Nations, but that was hundreds of years ago! Why should the money that I pay via GST, PST, income and property tax go towards someone who doesn’t even pay tax?

Any registered Indian receives an annual payment from the Canadian government, called a treaty annuity payment so as long as their tribe/band had, at one point signed a treaty with the crown.

“Treaty annuity payments are paid annually on a national basis to registered Indians who are entitled to treaty annuities through membership to bands that have signed historic treaties with the Crown.” Quote from: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/al/hts/tp-eng.asp

So, if you are a registered Indian, you have a chunk of land reserved for you and your tribesmen that you can use however you like.  You might have rights to fish a river as much as you want (for free) and sell the fish you catch even though your ancestors never sold fish for a profit and even if the river is protected from the general public. There are government housing programs for you which exist nowhere else in the country and you have access to the same education, healthcare (including paid healthcare premiums if you live in B.C. or Alberta), old age pensions, and social services as anyone else living in Canada.

According to Jordan’s Blog, Native’s receive 2.5 times less the amount of government funding as you and I.  I don’t know if I believe that because they have access to every government service that I have plus some extras services that I don’t have rights to and the last time I checked, Canadian citizens aren’t receiving any money from their government that they didn’t work for. The way I see it though, we deserve to have infinitely more government funding/services because we pay taxes and First Nations don’t.

I’m not suggesting that the government completely cut off help to the First Nations, because most of them wouldn’t be able to make it without the government’s help. Rather, I think that the government should help assimilate First Nations into Canada’s general population as quickly as possible because not only is it an economic problem, but it is simply not fair that someone has more rights than I do simply because my ancestors wronged them hundreds of years ago. I think that a good way to go about this would be to give each First Nation’s family their own, privately owned piece land (on their present reserves) with a house on it and the rest of the land on the reserve would become a public park or animal reserve. They would be made to pay reduced taxes for the first 20 years or so, and then regular taxes like everyone else.

I think that everyone deserves to be to be treated equally and that everyone should share responsibility equally, regardless of our past.  For if we base the present on the past, then what is to become of our future?