Concrete solutions Poverty to prosperity: First Nations in other parts of Canada have improved the lives of their people by developing urban-reserve economic engines inside or near cities; the Kapyong Barracks land opens similar doors for seven Manitoba Treaty 1 bands First Nations in other provinces have used a helping hand from tax advantages to establish urban reserves producing economic growth, transforming Indigenous lives and benefiting surrounding communities

MILLBROOK, N.S. — This bustling little suburb of Truro has a modern hotel, restaurants, a gas station, furniture store, multiplex cinema, RV sales and service centre and some of the tidiest, most well-kept homes in the province.

It has a workforce as diverse as its customers.

On the other side of the country, the area known as Westbank, near Kelowna, B.C., features a similar array of businesses, from a Mark’s clothing store to a Home Depot, Winners and 543 other companies.

What both don’t have is just as revealing as what they do; there are few outward signs of either community’s true nature.

Millbrook and Westbank are urban reserves.

Across the country, First Nations are establishing urban reserves, areas that are within or adjacent to cities and enjoy some of the tax advantages of regular reserves, but offer the opportunity for self-sufficiency lacking for many remotely located First Nations. Manitoba, it seems, has some catching up to do, with 10 relatively nascent urban reserves, and only two directly within its largest city, Long Plain and Peguis. By comparison, Saskatoon alone has six.

In mid-August, Peguis broke ground on its urban reserve, a $30-million office/residential/retail complex on Portage Avenue. Earlier this year, Ottawa signed an agreement in principle with seven Treaty 1 First Nations that will pave the way for an urban reserve on the former Kapyong Barracks site on Kenaston Boulevard.

Tax advantages are a source of resistance for some non-Indigenous Canadians and business groups, such as the Canadian Tax Federation, who see the urban reserve as offering an unfair advantage to non-reserve neighbours. Those tax advantages aren’t nearly as great as they seem.

As well, economic analyses of existing urban reserves, such as Millbrook and Westbank, suggest that not only do they provide a long-awaited economic foothold for band members, they contribute significantly to the economic well-being of their respective cities and provinces, as well as reversing the flow of money between the Canadian government and the First Nations.

“Wherever you see these developments, they end up making a positive contribution to the First Nation, to the city and to the province,” said Damon Johnston, president of the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg. “It’s a win-win situation.”

A study of Westbank First Nation, which entered...