http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Mining towns and cities have long argued they should get cut of provincial royalties
The Ontario NDP are promising to give First Nations all of the money the province makes from mining tax revenue. Party leader Andrea Horwath says that would amount to about $41 million dollars a year.
She says the NDP has long thought that Indigenous peoples should benefit from the resources taken from their traditional lands. “That’s been a principle that we’ve held for many, many, many years. And we feel that should we form government, we should actually live up to that principle and begin to change the circumstances,” Horwath says.
The loss of revenue has been accounted for in the party platform, Horwath says, and will be largely made up by raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
Patrick Madahbee, the Grand Chief of the Anishnabek Nation which represents 40 First Nations across the province, was pleased to hear of the NDP’s platform pledge.
“This discussion is long overdue. It does support a long-standing position that we’ve had that the treaties indicated that we should be sharing in the bounty of this land,” he says.
For the rest of this article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/ndp-campaign-promise-mining-tax-first-nations-1.4623799