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OTTAWA – A small committee of federal politicians and indigenous leaders is quietly figuring out how to pull off one of the most radical changes to the way Canada deals with its First Nations since the passage of The Indian Act.

The committee’s objective is to transform the means by which Ottawa transfers billions of dollars a year to the country’s 634 First nations.

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If it works, it could be the single most significant thing the Trudeau government will have done for its oft-promised “reset” of the relationship between the Crown and First Nations.

“This is going to be a monumental change in terms of what happens in Canada,” Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of the First Nations, in an interview. “People are sometimes wary of change but I think this will be in the best interests of Canada as a whole.”

The committee’s work also promises to transform a federal bureaucracy long set in the way it delivers services to all Canadians, ways that have been recently criticized by the Auditor General Michael Ferguson for being too concerned with itself and indifferent to improving the lives of its citizens.