New Brunswick: First Nations, province reach historic tax deals

FREDERICTON, NB, September 9, 2025 – First Nations in New Brunswick and the Holt Liberal government are set to announce deals on sharing sales taxes, what one chief calls a milestone in the otherwise strained relations between the sides.

The deals will restore tax-sharing agreements that were renewed for more than three decades before the previous Higgs Progressive Conservative government called them unfair and scrapped them in 2023.

Brunswick News confirmed the upcoming announcement with several chiefs and the premier, who hinted at the subject to a reporter in Ottawa.

“Coming to this agreement is extremely important to our communities,” said Chief Patricia Bernard, the Wolastoqey leader of Madawaska First Nation in northwestern New Brunswick, in an interview with Brunswick News on Wednesday.

“It’s all about governments having the ability to raise revenue to support the communities, infrastructure, education, health, housing, all of those things.

“But it’s also an important milestone for relationship building, and reconciliation between the province and First Nations.”

The sides plan to announce two separate deals, similar in content, on Thursday. The first will be in Fredericton between the province and the Wolastoqey Nation, whose six Indigenous communities line the St. John River (also called Wolastoq) and its tributaries.

Premier Susan Holt, Indigenous Affairs Minister Keith Chiasson and representatives of the First Nations will hold a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Delta Hotel in Fredericton.

The provincial leaders will then head over to Heritage Park in Metepenagiag (Red Bank First Nation), where they will make a 3 p.m. announcement with leaders from the nine Mi’kmaq First Nations in eastern New Brunswick.

The agreements are considered crucial for Indigenous communities, whose leaders complain their people were mistreated by settler societies and their governments.

Many of the communities suffer from some of the highest rates of unemployment, poverty and crime in the province. As many as 18,000 Indigenous people live on and off reserve in New Brunswick.

While in Ottawa earlier this week, the premier told Brunswick News that “we’ll have some more news on the state of Indigenous relations in New Brunswick on Thursday.”

“We’re announcing something that the communities have been looking for, for a long time that we’ve finally successfully been able to work out,” Holt said.

The premier said the announcement didn’t deal with the Wolastoqey’s big title claim before the courts but declined to say whether it was about new tax-sharing agreements.

Mi’kmaq chief Terry Richardson, the leader of Pabineau First Nation, confirmed to Brunswick News on Wednesday they’d be announcing the new tax deal.

“It’s a win-win for both sides,” Richardson said. “Could it have been a better deal for the First Nations? Yes. But I think it’s fair. It allows us to grow our economies, and at the same time it’s good for the province of New Brunswick.”

Like Bernard, Richardson wouldn’t divulge details until Thursday.

Former premier Blaine Higgs axed the decades-old agreements two years ago, arguing they created an unlevel playing field between First Nations and encouraged Indigenous communities near the Trans-Canada highway, like Madawaska, to compete unfairly with other New Brunswick businesses.

The deals were worth close to $50 million annually. Higgs didn’t like them because the benefits weren’t spread between the First Nations equally or based on their population sizes, and they sucked revenues from the provincial purse.

Madawaska and St. Mary’s First Nations, for instance, have businesses within thriving cities and both accumulated more than $100 million each in the last 18 years of the old deals, whereas Tobique First Nation, with a bigger population but located near the tiny community of Perth-Andover, only collected $1 million.

Instead, the Higgs government tried to forge new economic partnership agreements with First Nations that would see the province spend money on priorities within those communities, but only five of 15 signed on. Many chiefs described the move as paternalistic.

Under the old agreements, a First Nation received 95 per cent of funds collected from provincial sales, tobacco and fuel taxes, along with gaming revenues, from businesses on their reserves, for up to $8 million annually.

Any revenue collected above $8 million would see the First Nation collect 70 per cent, with the rest going to provincial coffers.

The idea was to promote self-sufficiency and entrepreneurial success in Indigenous communities.

Bernard, one of Higgs’s biggest critics, said Wednesday the former premier made a mistake by tearing up the old deals.

“He was wrong. To say that they were not fair makes no sense. The reason these agreements were put in place in the first place was to make things fair. And I think the problem with his statements were the lack of understanding of the legal and jurisdictional aspects of it.”

Higgs had warned that as First Nations settled with Ottawa over the loss of reserve lands, they’d buy up portions of New Brunswick away from their traditional reserves and offer sweet deals to customers, particularly along the TransCanada and other major highways, using the tax deals to lower prices.

Bernard’s response?

“It’s like anything, any business. A business opens up, invests money and time and effort, and makes money, and he says, ‘that will hurt other people.’ That’s a ludicrous concept.”

Madawaska officials are interested in buying land and opening businesses in Saint John, arguing it is part of traditional Wolastoqey territory.

“It’s not a joke. If we decide to expand in our own territory, our own homeland, that’s not an unreasonable thing for us to do. And again, it’s an investment. If we purchase land in our territory, create a huge source of revenue to provide jobs and income, it’s great. All of this has some bungee cord economics — a lot of the money comes back to the province.”

Now that the negotiations over the tax agreements are out of the way, the chief hopes the two sides can make progress on the Wolastoqey Nation title claim for more than half of the province’s territory.

Holt met with federal minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Rebecca Alty, one of several meetings she had with federal ministers, earlier this week. The premier told Brunswick News that the meeting included talks on Indigenous participation in major projects, while also updating Ottawa on the status of an ongoing title claim.

“When you show a willingness to sit down and work and negotiate, it makes getting to the table on other issues that much easier,” Bernard said.

Richardson agreed, although he thinks the next set of negotiations could be over sharing resource revenues, such as taxes or royalties generated by timber operations.

He said the difference between the Liberal government and the previous Tory regime was its willingness to sit at the table and negotiate.

“There’s no big secret: Every dollar that First Nations make is spent in the province. We don’t have offshore accounts like some other people.”

The chief said Pabineau has hired about 125 Indigenous people and 100 non-Indigenous people in the Bathurst region, making it one of the biggest employers, in a wide variety of fields, from health care to childcare to restaurants.

He said with the extra revenue, his community hopes to build homes again, cutting down on the waitlist of 50 or so families.

“It’s exciting. We were building three houses a year before they took the tax agreements away, and now we’re going to be able to build three houses again. And those are local contractors we employ, creating wealth.”

John Chilibeck is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton, New Brunswick, with files from Adam Huras. Title image: Cityscape, Saint John, New Brunswick, by Laura Stanley, Pexels.