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To help First Nations convert more of their land into urban reserves — First Nation-owned land that Ottawa has designated as reserves, complete with tax-exempt status — the federal government has decided to make changes to its Additions to Reserve (ATR) policy.

In 2014, economists with the Fiscal Realities group studied six First Nations located near urban areas. It found that urban ATRs offer significant economic and fiscal benefits to First Nations, regional economies and local governments. Economic growth, it seems, is good for everybody.

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The Membertou First Nation, an indigenous group in Cape Breton, N.S., has discovered the benefits of keeping land outside the reserve system. The community owns land outright in fee simple estate, the highest form of property ownership in Canada.

Fee simple, or what we simply understand as the free market, exists everywhere in Canada, except on reserves. These land holdings can be sold or transferred to anyone and pledged as collateral for loans. The upside to fee-simple ownership is that land can be used productively: unlike tax-free urban reserves, they don’t have the weaknesses of being held like a socialist collective.