First Nations Fiscal Management ActS.C. 2005, c. 9 Schedule — ss. 2(1) and (3)Current to 21 September 2026
There is a list at the back of a federal statute. A First Nation is on it or it isn’t, and being on it changes what a council may do with money, land and its own books. Here is the list, every version of it since 2005, and what the Act does to the names on it.
392 First Nations are named in the Schedule today. 397 have ever been named in it. 6 have been struck off, and every one of the six was debt-free — because paragraph 2(3)(b) does not permit any other kind of leaving.
Compiled from all 68 published versions of the Schedule and the 69 instruments that made them, read against the Canada Gazette. Every addition, every renaming, every deletion.
The list itself
All 397 names that have ever appeared, in the Schedule’s own alphabetical order. Struck names are kept in place and ruled through, the way a marked-up consolidation shows a repeal. Select a name for the date it was added, the order that added it, any earlier name it was listed under, and what the First Nations Financial Management Board has certified.
Two names are given here as the communities spell them rather than as the statute does. The consolidated Schedule prints “?Aq’am” and “?Akisq’nuk First Nation” with a question mark where the glottal stop belongs. That is not a limit of the character set — three entries further down the same list, Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it carries the glottal stop correctly. Both misprinted names are Ktunaxa.
397 of 397 names 392 on the Schedule now 6 ever struck 1 came back
No name in the Schedule matches that. The Schedule carries the band name as the Indian Register spells it, which is often not the name a community uses for itself — try a shorter fragment.
Royal assent 2005
Nobody listed until 2008
The Act received royal assent on 23 March 2005 and came into force on 1 April 2006 with nothing in the Schedule at all. The first 33 names were added by SOR/2007-276, registered 6 December 2007 and in force on 1 January 2008 — two years and nine months after the Act itself.
Since then the Minister has amended the Schedule 69 times. Nobody has ever been put on it by the Crown’s initiative: subsection 2(3) only lets the Minister act at the request of the council of a band, and every order in the Gazette recites that request.
Par. 2(3)(b)
A council may ask to come off the list. The Minister may agree — as long as there are no amounts owing by the band to the First Nations Finance Authority that remain unpaid. That is the entire condition, and it is the only one.
In twenty-one years it has been satisfied 6 times. Each order in the Gazette carries the same recital before the operative words: “And whereas, pursuant to paragraph 2(3)(b) of that Act, the band has no amounts owing to the First Nations Finance Authority.” Two of the six left on entering a treaty. Two moved their taxation to section 83 of the Indian Act. One opted out. One came back.
Treaty. The Tsawwassen Final Agreement took effect on 3 April 2009; the Nation now exercises its taxation jurisdiction under the treaty.
On the Schedule from 1 January 2008.
Moved its taxation jurisdiction to section 83 of the Indian Act.
On the Schedule from 1 January 2008.
Struck at its own request in March 2012, and back on the Schedule two years later. The only First Nation to have left and returned.
On the Schedule from 1 January 2008.
Back on the Schedule 4 April 2014 · SOR/2014-77
On the list for ten months. Added 27 March 2018, asked to come off by band council resolution on 8 January 2019, and went to a financial administration by-law under section 83 of the Indian Act instead.
On the Schedule from 27 March 2018.
Added 4 April 2014. Asked by council resolution of 8 April 2019 to opt out of the Act and have the name removed.
On the Schedule from 4 April 2014.
Treaty. Struck by Act of Parliament rather than by ministerial order, on the day the Whitecap Dakota Self-Government Treaty came into force.
On the Schedule from 30 September 2011.
What the Schedule unlocks
Addition to the Schedule is the door, not the room. It makes a First Nation eligible for the four institutions the Act creates — the Tax Commission, the Financial Management Board, the Finance Authority and, since 2023, the Infrastructure Institute. Each step after that is a separate decision, with a separate gate, and the numbers thin out fast.
The money
Local revenues raised under the Act reached a record $140 million in 2025–26, up from $95 million five years earlier. The Finance Authority’s loan book stands at $2.597 billion, it is rated AA−, and it has 185 members.
Set against that, the Authority’s own estimate of the First Nations infrastructure gap is $349.2 billion. Its entire loan book is 0.74% of the number it publishes as the size of the problem.
Subs. 5(1)
Local revenue laws
The law-making powers the Schedule unlocks are municipal in form, and the Act says so in detail: assessment of reserve lands, tax rates, taxation of business activities, development cost charges, fees for water, sewers, waste, animal control, recreation and transportation. Enforcement runs to liens on reserve lands, the recovery of interest and penalties, the seizure and sale of personal property, the seizure, forfeiture and assignment of interests or rights in reserve lands, and the discontinuance of services.
Section 4
A council may not make a borrowing law until it has made a law about its own financial administration and the Financial Management Board has approved it. The gate to capital runs through a federal institution’s sign-off on a nation’s internal bookkeeping.
Section 77
A borrowing member that has taken a loan may stop being one “only with the consent of all other borrowing members.” Not the lender’s consent. Every other borrowing First Nation in the country.
Subs. 84(2), (5)
The Authority withholds 5% of every loan into a debt reserve fund. If that fund is drawn down by half or more, the Authority shall require every borrowing member with an unpaid loan to pay “without delay” whatever it takes to refill it. One nation’s default is a bill to all the others.
Sections 52, 53
53.1 added 2023
On the Board’s opinion that there is “a serious risk” of default — not on an actual default — it may impose co-management, or assume third-party management and take “the exclusive authority to act in the place of the council of the First Nation”: to make the nation’s laws, manage its revenues, deliver or terminate its programs and services, and assign interests in its reserve lands.
Until 2023 that power reached local revenues — property tax. Section 53.1, added by the amendments of that year, extends it to other revenues: business income, lease revenue, provincial and municipal transfers, royalties. Subsection 53.1(3) lets the Board manage those revenues “including those that are comingled with other moneys of the First Nation.”
Privative clause
The words “final and conclusive and is not subject to appeal” appear 7 times in the Act, attached to the opinions on which every one of those interventions rests.
At the request of the council of a band, the Minister may, by order, amend the schedule in order to… delete the name of the band, as long as there are no amounts owing by the band to the First Nations Finance Authority that remain unpaid.
First Nations Fiscal Management Act, par. 2(3)(b)
The reading
Nobody is put on this list. Every one of the 397 names got there because a council asked, and the Gazette proves it line by line. The entrance is a door.
The exit is a door with a condition on it. You may leave if you owe nothing, and if you have borrowed you must also persuade every other borrowing First Nation in Canada to let you go. In twenty-one years six nations have walked back out, all of them debt-free, two of them only by signing a treaty and one of them by an Act of Parliament.
So the question Russ Diabo put — check whether your community is on this list — has a sharper form. Not are you on it, which 392 nations chose. What would it take to come off. On the present record the answer is: owe nothing, or stay.