Metis election results suspect, report finds

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A review of the 2004 election of the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS) found that activities at some polling stations were so questionable that the people of the province could not trust the election results.

The Saskatchewan government decided therefore to continue to withhold funding to the MNS and refuse to recognize the MNS provincial council that was sworn into office on Oct. 7 with Dwayne Roth as president.

The review was conducted by former Saskatchewan chief electoral officer Keith Lampard.

Complaints he examined ran the spectrum from polling locations being moved without notification to community members to a voters' list being added to with more than 100 names of people no one in the community had ever heard of, not even the local post mistress.

Lampard heard reports of large numbers of votes being cast by non-Metis people. He heard that large numbers of signatures in poll books appeared to have been written by the same person. In one case, 150 people voted at a polling station in an inactive Metis local when only 10 people had voted there in the last election when the local was active.

At another local where there were no eligible voters, 37 ballots were cast. Addresses of bowling alleys and ball diamonds were listed in poll books as places of residence of those people casting votes.

Roth has assumed leadership of the MNS despite concerns raised about the validity of the election outcome. Roth has described Lampard's review a "witch hunt" and the report a "one-sided account based on hearsay."

Two days after the Nov. 1 release of Lampard's report, Roth announced that legal action had been initiated in the Court of Queen's Bench against Lampard and the provincial government. The MNS seeks general damages in excess of $410,000. This is the amount of money designated to the Metis frozen by the province. The MNS calls the province's actions a "callous disregard for the rights of the plaintiff, including its right to self-determination as recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, as part of a scheme designed to undermine the rights of the plaintiff and its citizenship."

Roth is acting as lawyer for the MNS in the case.

Robert Doucette is one of the other candidates that ran for the MNS presidency during the election held in May. Doucette had been declared president after the official count was finalized on June 3, only to have that decision overturned hours later when it was discovered some ballot boxes hadn't been included in the count. Once those ballots were figured in, Doucette was out and Roth was president.

"Well, I'll say this for the record, that I want to thank Keith Lampard for his unbiased, well-written report about this election," Doucette said. "He's a third party. He has no interest in who wins or loses."

Doucette questioned Roth's assertion that the Lampard report was one sided. Roth had a chance to have his side of the story heard, Doucette said, but he refused.

"Dwayne Roth can't have it both ways. When the government said that they were hiring a third party to investigate this, Mr. Roth was the first person ... to say 'We're not going to help Mr. Lampard out. We don't accept this investigation and we're not going to participate.' So now he's coming out and saying 'This report is one-sided and it's all hearsay.' You can't say you're not going to participate and then say, 'Well, it's no good because we didn't participate.' They made a decision not to participate."

Ralph Kennedy, who sits as secretary on the MNS provincial council, said the council made its decision not to co-operate in Lampard's investigation to protect the MNS constitution and right to self-government.

"We don't go tell the Saskatchewan government how to run their elections. We don't tell the First Nations how to run their elections. We are not a bingo committee or legion committee. We're a nation of people," Kennedy said, adding the province has become involvd in the election to further its own agenda.

"They're trying to put in their own president and have a puppet Metis Nation because of our Powley rights," he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision that recognized Aboriginal hunting rights for Metis people. "The Powley decision will probably amount to quite a few dollars in rights for Metis people, and I think they're a little afraid of that. They're the last province in Canada, in our Metis homeland, to allow hunting rights for Metis people, in Saskatchewan. So they are trying to block whatever they can."

Doucette, who has maintained that he, not Roth, won the election, said the Lampard report supports him in his claim.

"It proves that I actually won as president in the 2004 election for the Metis people of Saskatchewan. I am the rightful president," he said.

On Oct. 30 Doucette and fellow presidential candidate Alex Maurice formed a provisional Metis council. The goals of that council are to try to force a new election and to ensure anyone who committed election fraud during the last election is charged. Doucette stressed the group isn't trying to replace the MNS, but wants to work to tackle the problems that arose during the recent election before a new election is held. A big part of the solution involves revamping the MNS registry, Doucette said.

Kennedy agreed that improvements to the registry are needed. He said the current registry is out of date and, as provincial secretary he'd like to bring in a new system. His plan would be to attend general assemblies, local and regional meetings to update membership lists over the next couple of years, and to have an accurate membership list completed before the next election.

"I was hoping with my position here that I could work with the provincial government. And if they wanted me to work with somebody like Lampard, I certainly wouldn't object to sitting down with him and taking his recommendations and looking at them and seeing how we could bet implement a system that's, I guess, as best as it can be," Kennedy said.

"I'm hoping the provincial government would come to their senses and say 'Let's sit down with the Metis leadership.' I'm hoping Mr. Sonntag [minister of the department of First Nations and Metis Relations] would say, 'OK, Mr. Ralph Kennedy, you're the provincial secretary. Come and have a meeting with me and let's me and you discuss how we can resolve this, you know, what systems that we have to put in place to make sure this never happens again,'" he said.

"We're far from saying that our system is a perfect system. But we're saying that system belongs to the Metis people. The Metis people are the ones that control it and are the ones that run it."

Doucette doesn't think letting that system deal with the election question is an option. He questions the impartiality of both the election's commission, which had ruled to uphold the election results after an appeals process, and the MNS legislative assembly, comprised of local presidents. Roth has said the assembly should be the forum for further appeals.

Both Doucette and Maurice have accused the sitting MNS executive of stacking the deck in their favor within the legislative assembly by hand-picking people who support them and making sure they are elected as local presidents, an allegation Kennedy denies.

"It's ridiculous. We have absolutely no control over the locals. Whenever a local decides to call a general meeting and have their elections, that's entirely up to them."

This isn't the first time the impartiality of the election's commission or the legislative assembly has been called into question. According to Minister Maynard Sonntag, changing the current appeals system was one of the recommendations made in the report by Metis lawyer Marilyn Poitras following the 2000 election, which was also plagued with problems.

"She recommended that this commission, even if it was functioning exactly the way it should be, still tere is a perception that it is not at arms length and it's not independent because it's made up of senators that could be easily in one camp or another and are in fact appointed to that commission by whoever or whatever the current MNS is of the day. So that's why she's critical of it," Sonntag said. "To allow the processes that I think Lampard generally says are in some ways creating the problem, to say that we'll let those processes fix the problem I think doesn't really work very well."

While both the sitting MNS provincial council and the provisional Metis council want the ear of the minister, Sonntag now wants to hear from the Metis people of Saskatchewan who don't have a direct stake in the election outcome. And if what they tell him is that the province has no role in fixing the problems, Sonntag said he will accept that recommendation.

"It would be my intention to first of all sit down with a group of Metis leaders from across the province, unelected and with no apparent affiliation to any one of the candidates, to hear their suggestions about what we should do ... and determine what, in fact, the role of the government really is here in terms of facilitating a fair and independent election. If it becomes apparent to me that the government should not be involved at all, then there's nothing that I'll do. I would be surprised if that's what comes out of this, but again, I really am reluctant to pre-empt any recommendations from what won't be scientific but what will be, I hope, a fairly clear direction from Metis people from across the province," he said.