Shoal Lake 40 First Nation got good news before Christmas: the promise of a $30-million road connecting the reserve hard by the Ontario-Manitoba boundary to the Trans-Canada Highway about 15 kilometres away.
The promise corrects an old injustice. Almost a century ago, when the growing city of Winnipeg needed drinking water, Shoal Lake was identified as the source. A canal was built, creating an island on which Shoal Lake 40 was located.
Thereby isolated, band members needed a boat to reach the mainland or an ice road in the winter. The reserve also lacked a water-treatment plant. Bottled water had to be shipped by barge or across the road. Shoal Lake 40 has been under a drinking-water advisory for 17 years.
As sometimes happens, interaboriginal rivalries or feuds stalled solutions to Shoal Lake's situation. Negotiations for a water-treatment plant's location foundered with the nearby Iskatewizaagegan First Nation. That group also imposes tariffs on anyone trying to reach Shoal Lake 40 through its lands.
The new road – dubbed the "Freedom Road" – will bypass the Iskatewizaagegan lands and help the residents of Shoal Lake 40 get much easier access to Kenora to the east and Winnipeg to the west.
Representatives of the Justin Trudeau Liberal government, the Greg Selinger NDP provincial government and the City of Winnipeg were on hand for the announcement, along with band leadership.
The 26-kilometre road was long overdue. It will make life easier for residents. Will it give them a chance for more economic development? We can only hope so.
Shoal Lake 40 had 568 registered members in August, 2011, of which the reserve population was 266, according to the band's own figures. Can a critical mass of 266 on the reserve and roughly 300 elsewhere create a viable economy based on earned income? We can only hope that the new road might help produce that result.
Otherwise, although a southern reserve, Shoal Lake 40 might replicate in its own way the unhappy situation of so many reserves in Canada – a situation underscored recently in a comprehensive report from the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board.
The board published its first report in 2012, based on 2006 census data, and issued another in 2015, based on 2011 data. The five-year interlude – 2006 to 2011 – showed some progress for Métis and Inuit, a little here and there for aboriginal people off-reserve, but none at all on average for those living on reserves.
Indeed, the already large gap between aboriginal people on- and off-reserve widened in those years. Yes, there are flourishing reserves, but not that many. Where aboriginal outcomes deteriorated, the board reported that "the declines were in large part due to weak economic conditions for First Nations on-reserve." The board stated the obvious: "Many First Nation reserves face challenges associated with low population and remoteness of location."
Here are a few examples of the disparities between aboriginal people on- and off-reserve. (The statistics are from 2011 and might have changed a little.)
On-reserve, 54 per cent of residents relied on government transfers for their main source of income, compared with 36 per cent off-reserve. The employment rate for those on-reserve was 35.4 per cent (down from 39 per cent in 2006), off-reserve 61 per cent.
Completion rates for college and trade certification dropped for those on-reserve. The high school completion rate: 44 per cent on-reserve, 65 per cent off-reserve. The university graduation rate for a diploma, certificate or degree: 5.7 per cent on-reserve, 11 per cent off-reserve.
The share who were self-employed: 3 per cent on-reserve, 6 per cent off-reserve. The share experiencing overcrowding in housing: 28 per cent on-reserve, 6.8 per cent off-reserve. The share living in dwellings in need of major repair: 43 per cent onreserve, 15 per cent off-reserve.
Almost one-quarter (151) of the country's 617 First Nations are under three forms of government intervention: recipient-managed, co-managed and third-party-managed.
The National Aboriginal Economic Board is chaired by the outstanding British Columbia Chief Clarence Louie, and comprises aboriginal and non-aboriginal leaders. Resource sharing, better education levels, infrastructure improvements, skills training and business-development assistance are among the fields for action that the board recommends, as have many other studies.
Whether these recommendations, if implemented, could close the gap between on-reserve and off-reserve aboriginal people, given the location and population size of many reserves, must perforce be an open question.