They are responsible on a provincial level for maintenance of basic services, and the day to day activities of the inter-relational needs of the First Nations members within the boundries of a respective province. The catch is First Nations members are sort of “psuedo” wards of the state, both to their advantage and disadvantage depending on the subject matter.

Enforcement on a provincial level will lead to a Federal blessing or naysay, because on reserve, federal law trumps provincial law.

There’s many a First Nations member that will tell you it’s a two way street, and they are forced on to the wrong side of that street by the Federal Government.

There is some justification to that claim, as the Government withholds a great portion of the annual funding to reserves until the following annum, forcing the First Nations to look for alternative methods of financing.

People living on reserve are no different from you and I. They want to work, they want to have homes and cars etc… but the reserve system itself, while rendering advantages such as tax exemption, does not lend itself to industry persay, so opportunities tend to be magnified and sometimes exaggerated as the particular members of a band seek to exploit a known source of revenue.

Tobacco is an obvious one, and there are some pretty significant operations growing out of the demand as a result.

The easiest solution is to allow the band to tax the product at a level commensurate with the legal product, and keep those dollars, however the sales impetus is about the price tag, so there is reluctance on reserve by individuals profiting from the sales of illegal product to do so.

You don’t see the proliferation of “smoke shacks” out in the west the way you do in the central and eastern parts of Canada, however that’s bound to change with the ever increasing taxation of the product.

I’ve been to Six Nations, so I’m pretty familiar with what your talking about, but by and large it’s contained to the reserve, and frankly as long as it’s on the reserve, there’s not much that can be done. The real solution lays in the band motivations, and if the Six Nations saw another more logical and productive direction to take, they’d most likely go that route.

You have to remember, they don’t get a whole lot of say either.

The only real suggestion I can make to this dilemma for you is to punish the living crap out of whichever MP’s and MPP’s look after this region. Make a solution the price tag of your vote, and without a solution, put the politicians on notice that they won’t see a second term.

If political parties know that the only way they can secure a seat is through resoluton, they will work harder. As long as there is no punishment for failure, they will continue to ignore the problem, to the detriment of your community, both native and non-native.

In my opinion, you need to rethink the approach. This, in the end, is not about policing the First Nations, it’s about policing all non-first nations. Remember, if tax exemption is the law of the land for First Nations, then it is the law, right or wrong. You need to go after the problem, and the problem isn’t the Indians, it’s everyone around them who supports the illegal activities.

Perhaps this means customs agents at all entrances into Canada from the reserves engaging in this type of activity. Perhaps by slowing down the entry and egress of commuters, and charging individuals coming off reserve with illegally obtained product, this would deter the average smoker from going on reserve to begin with, thusly effecting all the business efforts on reserve. Enough problems would force the Band to do something on thier end.

Probably cheaper in the long run as well.

The only other option I can see is to engage the Federal goverment through the courts.
Theoretically it might be possible to sue the Federal Government for failure to uphold it’s responsibility in the collection of GST by individuals of non-status purchasing tobacco on a reserve, forcing a settlement.

Essentially the reverse of what the First Nations did to the NS government in the late 90′s.

There the First Nations sued the government for failure to provide the exemption right. In this case you’d be sueing the government for failure to insure no non-native individual was excercising tax exemption illegally.

You would have to do so in the form of a class action suit, and you’d need to name both the province and the State in the action. Even then, I’m not sure what that would do in the end, although the Federal government has the power to enforce change at the reserve level if it so desires.

I’m thinking it would take years to get this through the courts, and even then, I’m just not certain how the Fed’s would get around the implementation component. There’d be no small number of First Nations members who materially benefit from the current situation willing to force the issue back into a courtroom based on the infringement of their rights to determination.

In Nova Scotia, even with the Government paying for the technologies implemented in the NSIFTE program, it took several years and a fair bit of cajoling to get the First Nations of all reserves gas bars on board. The First Nations are naturally suspicious of Government, and they have good reasons.

It’s a huge shitpile, no doubt of that.