The mandate of FSIN's Governance & Fiscal Relations Table is to negotiate jurisdictional and governance arrangements between Saskatchewan First Nations and the federal and provincial governments, along with accompanying funding arrangements.

On May 27, 2000, the FSIN and the governments of Canada and Saskatchewan signed the Framework for Governance of Treaty First Nations this agreement guided the discussions and identified key governance and fiscal provisions to be included in an Agreement-in-Principle (AIP) between Canada and First Nations and a Tripartite-Agreement-in-Principle (TAIP) among Canada, First Nations and Saskatchewan.

The Governance Table was established to assist in defining the roles and responsibilities of First Nations, Saskatchewan and Canada on a range of governance, jurisdictional and programming matters. It is intended to facilitate the recognition and implementation of First Nations governance. It was specifically agreed that the Governance Table would work to establish a new relationship that is consistent with and builds on the Treaty relationship, and is consistent with the implementation of the inherent right of First Nations to govern themselves.

The Fiscal Relations Table work is to facilitate the negotiation and conclusion of an Umbrella Fiscal Agreement in order to establish a new fiscal relationship between the parties which will support First Nations governments. This government-to-government fiscal framework must be more than an annual transfer of funds, set by Canada, to First Nation governments. It must ensure that First Nation governments have a stable and predictable fiscal relationship with Canada and Saskatchewan.

Initially separate the Governance and Fiscal Relations tables were merged in August 2002 for the purpose of completing negotiations in the AIP and TAIP.

Activities

In July 2003, negotiatiors for FSIN, Canada and Saskatchewan initialed a draft Agrement-in-Principle and Tripartite-Agreement-in-Principle. In November 2003, the FSIN initiated a review of the AIP and TAIP. Based on this review, the FSIN Indian Government Commissin provided direction to incorporate "Treaty Implementation" into the agreements. FSIN and Canada agreed to work jointly to develop an agenda of issues that need to be further discussed to make the draft AIP and TAIP acceptable to First Nations. This occured through early 2004. However, there continued to be an impasse on the issue of Treaty Implementation.

A visioning session between FSIN/Canada/Saskatchewan scheduled for November 30 - December2, 2004 was to help determine whether there was enough common ground to continue negotiations. There was a general consensus that parties should keep on working, based on the issues indentified in the session, but no resolution on whether to reconvene negotiations.

Parties met again in early February 2005 to discuss possible options for getting through the current impasse. Among the options to be discussed will be whether and how Canada might be able to go beyond, or at least sighnificantly stretch its current mandate to meet the interests of First Nations.