First Nations look to flip the script on Canada’s power buildout.As Ottawa pushes new transmission lines and nuclear energy, Indigenous leaders are pressing for ownership, consent and protection of land and water.

The article argues that more critical infrastructure ought to be owned primarily by FN.

This proposition is quite troubling when you consider that nations like the Lil’wat in B.C. are currently in court attempting to leverage the “duty to consult” and the Crown’s fiduciary duty to FNs to extract a higher price for power generated from their project, relative to the set rate that all other providers get.

FNs entities have a myriad of legal identities; from wards to whom the Crown has a ficuciary duty, to rightsholders who require consultation, to nations engaged in a “nation-to-nation” relationship with the government, and increasingly as sovereign overnments to whom our elected legislatures are delegating authority.

How each of those identies overlaps when it comes to owning and running critical infrastructure is unclear and that is genuinely worrisome.

Crown corps have established accountability and oversight mechanisms, and a very clear mandate to the public interest. FNs do not. Therefore until we can sort out their responsibility to the public interest and establish similar mechanism for accountability, it really does not seem appropriate for them to be in control of critical infrastructure, especially given a history/tendency to blockade things like highways or rail lines for leverage in unrelated disputes.