Indigenous spending is now the federal government’s second largest operational program expense, behind only national defense.

In a report written for the Fraser Institute, Tom Flanagan of the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, questions the idea of more money being directed at Indigenous communities. He says if better-funded government programs were the answer to Indigenous poverty, we would have seen the results by now. Flanagan says, between 1981 and 2016, federal spending on Indigenous programming more than quadrupled, yet the gap in the average Community Well-Being Index between First Nations and other Canadian communities barely budged.

The stated goal of Reconciliation through increased spending on government programs is to attain economic equality between Indigenous people and other Canadians. But Flanagan says there are serious questions about the effectiveness of these programs.

According to Flanagan, the biggest single problem facing First Nations is lack of economic opportunity. Seventy percent of First Nations are located more than 50 kilometres from the nearest town or city, and almost 20% have no all-weather road connection. He says development of natural resources such as forestry, oil and gas, and minerals is the best hope that remote First Nations can have for prosperity.