Correction to Fort William Sawmill Regulations

Summary#

The Canada Gazette published an erratum on August 2, 2023 correcting parts of the regulatory analysis for the Fort William First Nation Sawmill Regulations. The correction says earlier statements about large tax savings for the First Nation were wrong and clarifies that making the land reserve does not change the general application of federal or provincial corporate tax laws.

What it does#

• Corrects the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS) that accompanied the regulations and was originally published on April 13, 2011.
• Withdraws or fixes claims in the RIAS that said setting the sawmill lands apart as reserve lands would make provincial corporate tax and municipal property tax no longer apply, and that this would produce large tax savings for the First Nation.
• Notes that the Province of Ontario asked the federal government to correct the inaccurate taxation statements.
• Confirms that, despite the incorrect RIAS text, there were no changes to the project, enforcement of the regulations, or the actual collection of applicable taxes while the text was wrong.

Who's affected#

• Fort William First Nation and members — because the original RIAS described tax advantages that were said to benefit the community.
• The Province of Ontario and the City of Thunder Bay — since the RIAS described impacts on their tax revenues.
• The Abibow sawmill operation — because the RIAS discussed the financial viability of the sawmill and rent payments tied to the land.
• Canada and the Government of Ontario — the RIAS mentioned a bilateral funding arrangement and a small enforcement funding amount (under $10,000 per year).
• If it’s unclear who is affected in specific ways, that uncertainty is in the original RIAS numbers and the erratum corrects only the incorrect tax claims.

Why it matters#

• The correction clarifies that putting land into reserve and the sawmill regulations do not, by themselves, remove general federal or provincial corporate tax rules. That affects expectations about who pays what taxes.
• The original RIAS included concrete figures — for example, an asserted total annualized tax benefit of $1.43 million, a claimed corporate-tax “value savings” of $4.9M, and an estimated property-tax present value of $11.5M — and the erratum says the taxation claim behind those numbers was incorrect.
• For community members, local governments, and businesses, this matters because it changes how the financial effects of the land-change were described publicly. The erratum helps prevent decisions or public misunderstandings based on the earlier incorrect tax statements.