Tax-free First Nations store decried in Regina
The Cree Land Mini-Mart in Regina is on land designated as an urban reserve, enabling the store to sell products tax-free to status Indians. (CBC)First Nations stores selling cigarettes and other products tax-free create an uneven playing field for competing businesses, the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says.
"Reserve businesses not having to pay taxes creates an unfair playing field," Lee Harding, the CTF director in Saskatchewan, said Thursday. "It's extremely difficult for non-reserve businesses to compete."
To illustrate his point, Harding spoke to reporters at a Regina gas station that is one block away from a First Nations store where goods are sold tax-exempt to status Indians.
The owner of Sonshine Car Wash and Gas said his business has experienced a drop in sales of cigarettes of 75 per cent since the Piapot First Nation opened the Cree Land Mini-Mart. Overall sales at Sonshine were estimated to have dropped 25 per cent.
"I would love to compete with other businesses on a fair and equitable playing field. No problem with that whatsoever," Dion McArthur, the owner of Sonshine, told news reporters Thursday. "But right now with the way the tax situation is, they [the Cree Land Mini-Mart] are able to sell their products for cheaper than I can buy them for."
New tax rules
McArthur said he would be happy if he could also sell goods tax-free to status Indians. That used to be the arrangement until new rules came in covering tax exemptions.
At the Cree Land Mini-Mart, customers told CBC News they were happy to find products at lower prices.
The manager of the store, Alice Goforth, said the tax-exemption is nothing new.
"They should be happy that we're employing our people so that they don't have to be dependent on the other services," Goforth told CBC News.
She said that in the last year the mini-mart has enjoyed a steady increase in business and employs 43 people.
McArthur said he has had to tighten his belt and lay off five employees.
Chamber supports urban reserves
The Regina Chamber of Commerce said it supports treaty rights on urban reserves in the city.
"They are offering people who have treaty rights the right to actually go out and access those rights in a neighbourhood where they can. And that's what's happening," John Hopkins, the CEO of the chamber, told CBC News.
"This is an opportunity for people that have treaty rights to exercise them within the city of Regina. Which is a good thing."
Harding says the whole tax-exempt policy should be eliminated.
"We believe that a race-based tax exemption is not something that should exist in 21st-century Canada," he said.
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