Eric Crampton

Awesome

Photo of the back of a private transport bus featuring a Pegasus logo. The company phone number printed on the bus is 1-888-PEG-TRANS

LOSING MY MIND AT THE PHONE NUMBER ON THIS BUS IN FRONT OF ME

In local council politics, I don't care about left/right. Only measure that matters is whether the candidate will be effective in improving housing supply.

Wellington seems to have come out okay.

For more on Dunedin's candidates, including the vampire:

thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-...

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

My piece in today's Herald goes through one on the lessons from Canada's path to greater First Nations autonomy: starting small and learning as you go can have a lot of merit.

www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the...

WOW. Remember this May video of a US citizen wrestled to the ground by ICE agents and detained for an hour despite having a valid REAL ID?

It gets worse. Two weeks later, ICE did it AGAIN — handcuffed him and detained him for 20 minutes despite his REAL ID. Now the Institute for Justice is suing.

At least energy stays in the ETS!

Notably this suit was filed by the libertarian Institute for Justice

Building Nations: What Canada’s First Nations can teach us about devolution and development Canadian First Nations are helping tackle Canada’s housing crisis through council-like authority over their own land. Our new report highlights this proven Canadian turnaround success story and draws ...

Full report's here for those keen.

And stay tuned for a few more columns on it.

www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-...

I simply cannot believe that any hapū signing onto the Treaty could have imagined that their descendants would wind up needing to travel to a council office miles away to beg permission to build things on their own land.
Canada shows a path to this kind of rangatiratanga.

The process also built guardrails that help build capacity and accountability.

Sen̓áḵw is very obviously big-city.
Ch'íyáqtel is next door to a town the size of Palmerston North.
And a lot of Reserves are far more remote.
But really neat things are happening elsewhere.
First Nations can buy land near town and bring it under their jurisdiction.

And it just works. In part, I think, because they started small and learned along the way.

Other bits are similarly pragmatic.
Municipalities are creatures of provinces. Reserves are not. First Nations can adopt provincial rules, like building codes, by reference - if they want. Or choose others.

I love the pragmatism here.
The City has no jurisdiction on-reserve. But they can't provide services unless the Reserve has by-laws around utilities access. So the Nation sets mirror by-laws.

The BC Supreme Court confirmed that the Reserve is under its own jurisdiction, not subject to City by-laws, and that the City had no duty to consult with NIMBYs about the service agreement.

Phase 1 of the Sen̓áḵw project is nearing completion.
The pictures here are from July.
They didn't need Vancouver's permission to build.
But they did need to come to an agreement with the City for services.
There is no free-ride here.

In 2002, a little over a century after Squamish land was taken for the railway, it was returned - and came under Squamish jurisdiction. Kitsilano 6, on the map below. Stephanie Wood explains what happened next.

The First Nations Finance Authority (a bit like NZ's Local Government Finance Authority) lends to First Nations, with debt backed by those Nations' revenues.

It's bankable.

And you can see today how many First Nations have operational Land Codes - opting out of the Indian Act's management and opting into stronger self-governance.

It started slowly, but then spread.

It didn't happen everywhere all at once.
I think critical to success here was that it started small, learned along the way, and built institutions to help followers succeed.
Success spread outward from Kamloops over time.

The Kamloops Amendment allowed greater tax authority.
Subsequent changes enabled better access to finance, and opting-out of the Indian Act's land micromanagement.
Here's how that works in practice.

Kamloops argued for greater devolution.
"We feel we are in a better position to judge the needs of our people than officials of the Department located in Ottawa. Much of the dissatisfaction with the present Act arises from the lack of power and authority to Band Councils."

All of this has been decades in the making. 1951 Amendments led to greater on-reserve authority, and then finding where the legislation needed to be improved.
The Kamloops Amendment began the modern era.

Shifting from dependence to real autonomy - something that looks a lot like rangatiratanga - has been a decades-long process of learning and institution-building.
Chief Derek explains how those institutions helped:

Being comparable to a small municipal government doesn't mean having to self-provide services that can only be delivered at larger scale.
Instead, they negotiate service agreements with the neighbouring municipality - and use taxes on their own land to cover the cost.

Ch'íyáq means fish weir and tel means place.
So Ch'íyáqtel means place of fish weir.
They're buying back land to be able to restore the fish weirs.

Ch'íyáqtel has less than 800 people. They're next to Chilliwack, BC.
They are using their autonomy to build housing, and to build economic independence.
They run their own taxes, have their own zoning, and are buying back land to add to their jurisdiction.

Now, First Nations can opt into autonomy.
They can take up fiscal autonomy and proper tax authority - by meeting probity requirements of the Fiscal Management Board.
They can opt out of the Indian Act's land micromanagement - by passing a Land Code that has the Band's support.