First Nations get $20M from lotteries
Funds from province to aid development

Wed Nov 22 2006
By Martin Cash
Winnipeg Free Press

MANITOBA has agreed to contribute $20 million from lottery profits to a First Nations economic development fund to help close the growing gap between the standard of living on reserves and the rest of the province.

The five-year agreement is part of a larger initiative between the province and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs that could lead to an expansion of gaming activities on First Nations communities.

Details of how the new fund will work have yet to be determined, but it is to be managed by a board of trustees, which will include representatives of the AMC and the province. Money for the fund will come from lottery profits.

AMC officials said they hope the fund will be in place by the spring.

The deal is seen as part of a much broader effort by First Nations leaders, the private sector and the province to create economic development opportunities for Manitoba's relatively impoverished First Nations.

For instance, a group of more than a dozen bands are negotiating with Ainsworth Lumber to acquire an ownership stake in a new $250-million oriented strand board plant that the B.C. company is looking to develop near Selkirk.

Also, the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation of Nelson House is partnering with Manitoba Hydro in the Wuskwatim Hydro generating station. That band has the right to acquire a 33-per-cent stake in the dam by the time construction is completed in 2012 and to share in the profits over the life of the project.

Manitoba Hydro has already said it would negotiate some sort of economic participation deal with other First Nations as it develops the large Conawapa project.

Dave Chomiak, the minister responsible for gaming in the province, said that negotiations with AMC on gaming issues have been going on for close to three years.

"This fund is part of a larger package that includes a marketing study on new First Nations gaming opportunities," he said. "We think such a fund is necessary because of the terrible situation of poverty and unemployment on reserves and the fact that there is no real investment capital available for First Nations."

Those negotiations include the possibility of establishing a First Nations Gaming Corp., which would provide the oversight and governance for casinos on reserves

Dennis Meeches, chief of the Long Plains First Nation, has been on AMC's negotiating team. He said the process is part of the long-standing discussions about the development of more First Nations gaming in Manitoba.

In 2000, the province agreed to license five First Nations casinos but only two have gone ahead -- one at the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in The Pas and one on the Brokenhead reserve north of Winnipeg on Highway 59.