Hold chiefs to account

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Many Assembly of First Nations meetings end with not enough chiefs present to attain quorum. When it happened in Charlottetown, several chiefs felt the need to chastise their colleagues. Sowalie Chief Doug Kelly, also a member of the First Nations Summit executive task force, suggested that having a quorum is not the only way to do business.

He said the Summit gets around that problem by letting those delegates who stay to the end make the decisions. If you want to have a say, you better plan on being there for the whole meeting, he said.

He blasted his fellow chiefs for their casual approach, saying a good first step for a more business-like approach would be for meetings to "start on time and end on time." The chiefs need to be held more accountable for their actions at expensive out of town meetings, he added.

"Open up the membership of this assembly to all the people. That'll make some of us behave, if they can watch us," he said.

He also called for "a national executive that has been elected by the people," instead of the present situation where chiefs in a region appoint or elect their vice-chief.

Later, Chippewas of Mnjikaning First Nation Chief Sharon Stinson Henry asked the executive to compile and send out a report on attendance.

"We have to all be accountable to our communities when we get back," she said. "We spend a lot of money to be here."

Chief Harold Sault of the Northern Ontario Red Rock First Nation suggested that some regions intentionally register a lot of delegates and then make the strategic decision to stay away from the meeting if they don't agree with the way things are going. He alleged that the threshold for a quorum can be artificially raised and the meeting hi-jacked by any group that employs that tactic.

"We all know that some regions register lots of delegates and then don't show," he said. "It's a trick that's been used for years."

But others said chiefs from remote communities were in a difficult position because there might only be one flight to their region per week and they either had to leave on that flight or pay for another entire week on the road.