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Canadian Classroom: What happened?

Author

Paul Barnsley, Windspeaker Staff Writer, Winnipeg

Volume

21

Issue

2

Year

2003

Page 30

INAC promised to dismantle in Manitoba

It was supposed to be the place where we would see the beginning of the end of the department of Indian Affairs in Canada.

Years passed, and close to $40 million was spent on the devolution of authority from INAC to First Nations, and instead of the department's demise, Manitoba is one region where the federal government has more of a role to play in the lives of First Nations people than ever before.

Take Dakota Tipi First Nation as an example.

Last year, the community collapsed into a violence-filled state of anarchy, which prompted Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault to withdraw support from Chief Dennis Pashe and order a new election.

Nault made the same move on Sandy Bay First Nation on Sept. 26 of last year. Amid allegations of mismanagement and corruption, Nault invoked his ministerial authority under section 74 of the Indian Act, withdrew his official recognition of chief and council, ordered a new election and placed Sandy Bay under third-party management.

Irvin McIvor, 38, led the fight to get Ottawa to step in at Sandy Bay. He will run for chief in the election expected to take place in late April or early May. He said the former chief and council is suing INAC to contest their ouster.

"Ebb and Flow, too, is citing corruption in the election," said McIvor. "I don't know where that one is going, but right now I think there's six nations fighting with their leadership. It's not a very good time."

All of this activity comes on the heels of an embarrassing situation at Sagkeeng, when First Nations health staff took a now infamous trip to the Caribbean with a senior Health Canada bureaucrat, paid for out of the band's health care funding.

Now Sagkeeng council is in another predicament, fighting a lawsuit brought by Wing Construction which alleges the band owes the company millions after it failed to secure departmental authority to build its early years school. The band went ahead with initial construction and now Wing's out of pocket for its involvement, the company says, a situation that has made nervous other businesses across the country that do work for bands.

As well, there are many First Nations in the province that are experiencing serious financial problems. Nearly half of the province's bands are in some sort of co-management agreement.

Just in case you thought things are brought back in line when a third-party manager is installed, notice that the Shamattawa First Nation of Manitoba is suing its third-party manager alleging things got worse after the manager took over.

It may not be a coincidence that Manitoba was the birthplace of the First Nations Accountability Coalition, headed by Leona Freed, who is fighting against a "self-appointed chief claiming hereditary custom" in her own Dakota Plains community.

"There is a trend going on," McIvor said. "There's a hell of a trend going on here in Sandy Bay. I don't know if I woke up the people in Manitoba, but I did some talk shows on [local Aboriginal radio station] NCI news. I said on there that grassroots issues have never been dealt with. I've spoken to [Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs grand chief] Dennis Whitebird about this and I told him, 'You guys don't deal with the issues. You want to fight the national issues on a day-to-day basis more than anything else.' What about the grassroots issues? People are getting sick and tired."

Brian Pallister, the Indian Affairs critic for the Canadian Alliance, represents the Portage la Prairie area, which includes Dakota Tipi. He has been looking closely at the developments in his province.

"Statistically, it's clear that Manitoba has greater problems than other regions-and Saskatchewan maybe," he said. "Why? Some have argued [it's] because the government used those two areas as lab rats and they tried to push powers onto people before they were ready. Others would argue there's an absence of the resources to fulfill the obligations those powers entailed Other people will argue that this was done so that it will be perceived as a failure on the part of the First Nations communities."

McIvor criticized the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) for being too much of an insiders' club. Freed agreed that's a big part of the problem.

"AMC is there to protect the chiefs," she said. "They're there to protect the chiefs' interests. They're not there for the ordinary Indian. The chiefs do what they do for their own interests. AMC and AFN [Assembly of First Nations], they take directions from the chiefs. They're not there for the people. The ordinary Indian didn't elect the AFN people in. The chiefs did that and they say, 'Well, the people elected us in.' But our organization says, 'Yes, you say you're elected in, but if the elections were run by, or similar to, Elections Canada, then a lot of those chiefs wouldn't have that position.'"

Monies flow

McIvor makes note of an added problem developing as an indirect consequence of the process the minister uses to invoke his section 74 authority.

Deposed chiefs and councils may have their access to INAC revenue curtailed, but the minister's failure to notify other government departments of his withdrawal of official recognition of the leadership leaves the tap flowing with VLT, tobacco rebate, and GST monies.

"How could anybody let this happen and who has the power to stop it?" he asked.

Pallister said he encountered the same problem with Dakota Tipi.

"At Dakota Tipi [INAC] shut down the band. Essentially, [former chief] Dennis Pashe and the council were removed from power. But at the same time, they left the casino up and running, didn't tell the provincial government, which is the licensing authority, that they were doing this. I have it in writing from the minister that he did not tell the provincial government. He said it was not his responsibility, nor was it policy, to inform the provincial government," he said.

"It's a mess is what it is. This is just one example of he types of issues the federal government should be addressing. Instead, they're going to set up mini-ombudsmen on the reserve. Does anybody really believe that's going to work? It's just a case of misguided priorities," Pallister said of one of the accountability initiatives set out in Indian Affairs' proposed First Nations governance act.

Real people, real pain

Critics have charged that the government's third-party management system is also misguided.

Dollars to pay the managers get taken directly from the monies that go to the band, before bills are paid and community needs are met. Debts the community accrued before the managers take over are ignored, sources say, and no schedule of repayment is planned, leaving the community in the red, and under the manager, in perpetuity.

"They just shut off the hydro the other day at Dakota Tipi," said Pallister. "This affects people in a real way. This isn't a theoretical discussion. The third-party manager there, because of the government's policy on this, is saying he's not compelled to pay those bills, which were in effect before he went in. It's a dangerous situation. The whole third-party management thing really needs a review. It's absurd, frankly."

McIvor is also worried about paying the hydro bill. He alleges there is $510,000 missing from the coffers that the community got to pay Manitoba Hydro.

"We were given that money. Now where are we going to get it? They're not going to give it to us again."

He also wonders about $570,000 the community is on the hook for because of a loan taken through Peace Hills Trust. And employee benefits he says haven't been paid since August.

"You're looking at a couple of million that's coming off a $23 million budget already. So now INAC is going to be saying, 'You know what? There's not going to be any more repairs. The housing repairs are gone.' They're going to make staff cuts. There's going to be massive layoffs. People that have payments to make, who have children, are gong to be laid off because of inept leadership."

Papa, don't preach

Many observers say INAC sets a bad example when it comes to accountability, openness and transparency.

None of our sources, for example, have been able to get an accounting of the almost $40 million that was targeted for the dismantling of INAC in the 1990s.

""No, I questioned the minister, but he wouldn't answer," Freed said.

Pallister hasn't had any better luck getting answers.

"It would be hard for me at this point not to communicate frustration to you," he said, when asked about the dismantling money. "In trying to get to the bottom of several issues, one you know about is Virginia Fontaine [Health Centre on Sagkeeng]. There is significant money there that we have reason to believe was misappropriated and we also have reason to believe that the federal government was not diligent in its efforts to structure the responsible transfer in such a way that the people who were supposed to be receiving services were. But to get to the bottom of the issue-and this is after two-and-a-half years-is very, very, difficult. Not a dollar of that money, to my knowledge, has been recovered. And we have to learn from our mistakes. How can you do that if there's an attempt to gloss over those mistakes when they happen?"

He sees that as the biggest problem in First Nations governance.

"What's the government doing here? Coming up with ways to make chiefs and councils more accountable? What about the accountability at the federal government level? What about the transparency here?" he asked. "For example, at Dakota Tipi, the former chief wants an investigation, a forensic audit and an investigation. I've spoken to Dennis about that. The new chief and council want an investigation. They're calling for an independent judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of where the money went. Over $10 million went in there in the last few years, in one of the smallest reserves in Canada. Here's where I would argue there's a