This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Crystal Smith, January 12, 2026
This past fall’s federal budget triggered a predictable round of frustration from some First Nations leaders. As a former elected chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, I understand that reaction well; for years, we’ve watched federal budgets more often announce cuts than commitments to Indigenous affairs. But if there’s anything I learned over 16 years of serving the Haisla Nation Council in various capacities, it’s that our future will not be built by the federal budget.
Despite Budget 2025 committing $141.4 billion in new spending over the next five years, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) called it a “missed opportunity.” The AFN’s issue: Budget 2025 came billions of dollars short of the investments required to close the infrastructure gap in First Nations by 2030. The Liberal government has also taken heat for delivering the first budget in over a decade without a dedicated Indigenous section, and its perceived shift away from social programs and towards economic reconciliation.
I grew up in Kitamaat Village, where I spent most of my childhood with my grandparents, Cecilia and Gilbert Smith. We didn’t have much. I know what it’s like to grow up in a place and time where every dollar matters. The band and most families in our community lived paycheque to paycheque. It seemed like Indian Affairs was always hovering, with a consistent message: you can’t be trusted to govern yourselves and manage your own affairs.
Over time, this unique brand of paternalism seeped into the mindset of our membership—generation after generation born with the understanding that poverty is the status quo. In our minds, for too long, Ottawa was the only solution.
Things turned around after Ellis Ross was elected as a Haisla councillor in the mid-2000s. He started to change the conversation there, slowly but steadily shifting the narrative to one of economic self-determination through LNG development. Our nation had gone from facing threats from Indian Affairs to being placed under remedial management to signing our first Impact Benefit Agreement in 2009. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was a significant first step in moving ourselves out of a dependency mindset to one of self-determination.
Within a mere two years, in 2011, Ellis was elected chief councillor, and Haisla were negotiating directly with industry—signing milestone commercial agreements on what became the LNG Canada project.
I will never forget the reaction of federal and provincial bureaucrats when I first said our nation was acting as a proponent—not a bystander—on an environmental assessment. They looked at me with great disbelief. Now, Haisla are preparing to bring Cedar LNG—the world’s first Indigenous-majority-owned LNG facility—into full operation. We went from struggling from one federal transfer payment to the next, to structuring global commercial deals.
This is a story every First Nation across Canada has the ability to tell—if they choose it. We absolutely must hold government accountable for its legal and fiduciary obligations to First Nations, but we can’t keep waiting for Ottawa’s social programs to change our reality.
Federal governments change. Even within a party, priorities shift as each leader brings new vision and ambitions. We witnessed this with the exit of a socially focused Trudeau government, and the entry of the Carney government, increasingly set on leveraging resources to rescue the national economy—a transition that seemed to shock many voters. However, what should not change is our commitment to setting our own path—with our own revenue streams, creating our own opportunities.
In Haisla, that meant negotiating commercial deals with multinational partners, investing in skills training and infrastructure, and bringing our people into the boardroom as owners, not just handing them jobs. Most importantly, it meant recognizing our language, land, and values as foundational strengths to our economic success—not barriers like many would have you believe.
This isn’t an easy path. It’s uncomfortable. It requires the courage to think differently, take risks, and lead through critique, both from within our own nations and from the Canadian public. But if we want to move beyond managing poverty, we need to move ourselves to a place where we are managing prosperity.
So, while it’s critical we hold Ottawa’s feet to the fire on its fiduciary obligations, we must pivot away from treating each budget or program announcement as the lever that will move us to our destiny. Our energy should be redirected towards rewriting that destiny ourselves—building businesses and securing equity in major projects as leading proponents in our own territories.
As I have learned from the Haisla people, when we stop waiting for permission, the possibilities open wide.
