Prime Minister Mark Carney convened the first meeting of its kind between First Nations leadership and First Ministers on Monday, agreeing to develop new revenue-sharing mechanisms including a potential First Nations Sovereign Wealth Fund, alongside billions in emergency, policing and workforce funding.
Prime Minister Mark Carney convened a meeting between First Nations leadership and First Ministers in Ottawa on Monday, the first meeting of its kind, bringing together nearly 200 First Nations chiefs and leaders alongside the Prime Minister and provincial and territorial premiers. Leaders focused on new opportunities for First Nations to develop, operate and share in the economic benefits of major infrastructure projects.
They agreed to develop new revenue-sharing mechanisms, including the potential creation of a new First Nations Sovereign Wealth Fund. Carney directed the Minister of Finance to work with First Nations leaders to determine how to most effectively establish such a fund, with the stated goal of giving First Nations peoples a direct stake in major projects. The federal government will also amend the First Nations Fiscal Management Act to expand the First Nations Finance Authority's lending authority.
The funding announced with the meeting includes $260 million over four years to establish the Partnerships for Indigenous Workforce Readiness Fund, and an Indigenous-focused stream of the $8 billion Team Canada Strong initiative, which the government says it is working on. On emergency preparedness, Carney announced more than $2.5 billion over five years, plus nearly $450 million in ongoing funding, through the Emergency Management Assistance Program, the Wildland-Urban Interface firefighting initiative and the First Nations Fire Protection Strategy. Policing funding includes more than $630 million over four years, alongside $250 million in ongoing annual funding, to renew and expand First Nations and Inuit Policing Program agreements, plus an additional $140 million over four years for crime prevention and culturally sensitive community safety initiatives.
Unlike the ceremonial opening of the meeting week, Monday's session produced decisions and funding figures, and it is those decisions that are the news here. The Sovereign Wealth Fund itself is a potential creation, not yet an established fund: leaders agreed to develop the mechanisms and the finance minister was directed to work out how to establish it. Leaders also discussed the possibility of reforming or abolishing the Indian Act as part of modernising the Crown's relationship with First Nations, and Carney reaffirmed his commitment to charting a path beyond the Indian Act, but no decision to abolish it was announced. The meeting follows Carney's commitment, made at the Assembly of First Nations Special Chiefs Assembly in December 2025, to convene such a meeting in 2026.
The stakes for First Nations leaders are practical: a share of the revenue from major projects, rather than consultation about projects decided elsewhere, and lending capacity to take part in them. The workforce fund, the policing agreements and the emergency funding address gaps that leaders raised directly, in emergency preparedness and policing, alongside the longer-term question of ownership.
The test now is design and legislation. A fund that gives First Nations a direct stake in major projects will have to be built, and the Fiscal Management Act amendment passed, before the revenue-sharing promise becomes money. Until then, Monday's meeting stands as a set of agreed directions and funded programmes, with the fund itself still to be created.