Tax exemption still not respected

Last spring, Ioronhiateka Delisle’s stepson needed a new pair of skates, so they went to Play It Again Sports in Kirkland, part of the area covered by Kahnawake’s agreement with the province to exempt Kahnawa’kehró:non from Quebec Sales Tax (QST) at the point of sale.

As they went to pay, the skates already molded to the 14-year-old’s feet, staff presented a laminated sheet of paper with the store’s tax exemption policy – one that happened to be at odds with Kahnawake’s tax exemption rights.

“I said ‘sorry, if you don’t accept the card, I’ll have to go somewhere else,’” said Delisle. “The employee that was helping us understood and said no problem. I’m sure management wasn’t impressed that the skates were already molded.”

The Eastern Door’s call to the store was not returned by deadline, but head office said the franchisee has been contacted and encouraged to reach out after they have ensured they’re following correct tax-exemption policies.

While the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) agreement with the province is older than the 21st century, Kahnawa’kehró:non routinely encounter issues when they try to exercise their tax-exemption rights. These complaints are on the rise of late, according to the MCK, and community members are urged to report new incidents to Tricia Collier at MCK’s Client-Based Services to be forwarded to Revenu Quebec.

“Kahnawake spends a lot of money in the surrounding communities,” said MCK chief Jeffrey Diabo. “For them to start doing things like this again, in my opinion, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot.”

Yet many stores have proven stubborn. According to Collier, reasons for refusal can be anything from ignorance to downright hostility and racism – and could stem from ill-informed management or the whims of a fickle worker. That’s why she aims to gather as much information as possible about any given incident.

“In some cases, it’s actually the store employee that’s taking that upon themselves to not honour the exemption, not the owner or the manager,” Collier said.

Whatever the reason, she’s seen more reports of late, and the MCK communique that relayed this trend inspired yet more complaints. When Collier got to her office the next day, she had received four new reports by email and two phone calls to return, illustrating the scope of the problem.

Local contractor Mark Jacobs was just on the other side of the Mercier Bridge when he encountered a store unwilling to honour his tax exemption rights in December 2024.

He was at Portes et Moulures Depot in LaSalle shopping for interior doors and materials for hardwood stairs. When he went to the counter to pay, he said he gave the manager his band card only to be told they’d never heard of a tax exemption for Kahnawake band members.

“I calmly said, ‘You have to. It’s the law,’” he remembers. When the storekeeper objected, Jacobs pulled up Revenu Quebec’s website, which clearly outlines Kahnawake’s tax exemption agreement and where it applies, which includes Montreal.

To Jacobs’ frustration, the storekeeper refused to look at it, instead showing him what he found using ChatGPT, which is known to make routine errors.

“I again calmly pointed out that ChatGPT is not the tax law, that Revenu Quebec is the tax law, and that what I was trying to show him was directly from their site.”

The store would not yield, and Jacobs was so in need of the materials that he bought them anyways, but he didn’t give up. He went back to the store several times, he said, asking if they had changed their policy, and the answer has always been no.

After a few times, he contacted Collier, who reports these incidents to Revenu Quebec, but Jacobs has still not been able to get the store to acknowledge the tax exemption. While he has been able to recover the taxes, he is upset about the affront to his rights.

“I never once got angry with the guy or started yelling, but this status quo needs to change because our rights are being infringed upon by private businesses that are simply ignorant to the law,” he said. “The systems that are supposed to be in place to protect those rights are broken.”

He believes stores should be fined for failing to provide the tax exemption to which Kahnawa’kehró:non are entitled and that all businesses need to be made aware of the tax exemption rules when they get their business number.

“I mean, what does the tax exemption law mean if they can simply refuse to follow it with absolutely no repercussions?” Jacobs said.

“At some point there needs to be real consequences. Enough is enough.”

He believes the existing tax exemption regime needs an overhaul, particularly when it comes to the fact that communities have to negotiate separately with the province.

“In Ontario, I can use my tax exemption card anywhere. But in Quebec, I can only use it within the municipalities on Revenu Quebec’s list.”

Reached by The Eastern Door, the owner of Portes et Moulures, Josée Brodeur, said she was unaware that Kahnawake Mohawks have an agreement with the province that applies to her LaSalle location, which opened in November 2024.

The agreement doesn’t apply to her primary location in Sherbrooke, where she is based, nor Laval, according to Revenu Quebec’s website. It does apply at the Longueuil location, however. While she was aware of tax exemption for deliveries to First Nations reserves, she said her stores don’t deliver, and that she believed she therefore had no tax exemption obligations.

“It’s a law I wasn’t aware of, so of course, if I had been informed, we would have applied the law. If it means the people of Kahnawake shouldn’t pay taxes to my store, we will (honour it),” she said.

Asked why the store hadn’t changed its policy after Jacobs showed the rules to the storekeeper, she suggested it might have been someone without decision-making authority.

“We apologize,” she said. “We can apologize to the client, and if he comes back, we’ll be happy to grant him his tax reduction.”

She said her other stores don’t get many Indigenous clients.

“We didn’t have a policy in place for that, and we’re going to implement one,” she said.

Diabo recently brought up the issue of tax exemption issues to representatives of Quebec at the political level. While he hasn’t experienced this problem firsthand, he said, it’s easy to understand why it draws the ire of Kahnawa’kehró:non who experience it.

“I think it goes back to the whole idea that as the Indigenous people of this land, these newcomers don’t have the right to impose their laws or rules and regulations on us. Our people still carry that notion of sovereignty, the whole idea of being a Mohawk. Quebec or Canada don’t have that right to be legislating over us,” he said, adding this extends to tax exemption.

“It’s important that we maintain those things, so that way, our next generations coming are aware that our rights are solid, they’re here, they still exist, and we’ve got to stand up for them.”

Kahnawa’kehró:non whose tax-exemption rights have not been respected can contact Collier at [email protected] or 450-638-0500.

Revenu Quebec’s website outlines the details of the QST poinst-of-sale exemption, which has some exceptions and applies everywhere in the Roussillon regional county municipality (MRC) and 19 other nearby municipalities.

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Marcus Bankuti, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter