A $200,000 grant from the City of Victoria to the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations is a “tangible step” towards unity so all families in the region can thrive, the nations’ leaders say.
In a letter to Victoria councillors, Songhees Nation Chief Ron Sam said for far too long, the city has disproportionately benefited from development on Songhees and Esquimalt territories.
“Benefits to the City have occurred to the detriment of the Songhees Nation, which has but a small fraction of its original territory and faces insufficient revenue to carry out our vision in the delivery of programs and services, language and culture revitalization, and stewardship of lands and waters,” he said.
Councillors approved a $200,000 grant to the nations to demonstrate the city’s commitment to reconciliation as part of the 2023 budget process. The same amount is to be allocated annually in the draft financial plan for consideration by the next council, to be elected in October, as part of a five-year pilot project.
The leadership of both nations said in a joint statement they hope the initiative sets a precedent for other municipalities.
Ry Moran, the University of Victoria’s associate university librarian for reconciliation, said Indigenous peoples have been very clear about the need for more help and less control and interference.
“Done well, this absolutely has the potential to exhibit strong leadership for other communities across the country to figure out how to be in good relationship with our neighbours,” said Moran, who served as director of statement-gathering at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and director of the National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation before coming to UVic.
The primary work of reconciliation is building mutually respectful relationships and rectifying past inequalities, he said, and it’s incumbent on all organizations and levels of government to think about what they can offer.
“The investment of resources, be they human resources, physical resources or capital, in the form of money, are all very important in this work,” he said.
Mayor Lisa Helps had initially recommended an annual grant based on 15 per cent of new assessed revenue — the amount of new tax revenue that a local government receives in a year from new development — that would have grown cumulatively each year. She later amended the proposal to 10 per cent.
Helps said the approved amount is relatively small and won’t grow over time in proportion to the city’s wealth. Still, it’s a “concrete step” toward deeper reconciliation with the nations, she said. “I hope that the council of the day will go back and look at the original proposal and have a more meaningful, lasting approach to reconciliation through a cumulative grant, because that’s sort of what was meant to happen and hopefully there’s still room for that in the future,” Helps said.
The Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria, a citizens’ advocacy group dedicated to more accountable municipal government and lower taxes, wanted the idea to be put to a referendum. The group’s chair, John Treleaven, noted that the original proposal would have seen the grant grow to more than $4.5 million in 2021 if it had been created in 2002.
While it’s scaled back, it’s still a “bold decision” by council, he said — as is not requiring the nations to report on how the money is spent. A majority of councillors voted against a reporting requirement.
The decision to provide a total of $1 million to the nations over five years without any reporting requirements puts the council in a position where it is failing to exercise its fiduciary duty to taxpayers, he said.
