Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 17th, 2012

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Well, as I said, I speak for Whitecap. Certainly we're in favour as far as being accountable to our people and sharing our financial information. I think it's very important.

I can't speak on behalf of the other 632 first nations. That's up to them to speak on it.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Again, just to clarify, I understand your position on this, that it's something you would support. But do you think every first nation should be consulted on such a matter?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

I don't see the big issue here. I think if we're open and transparent, why would we oppose something that's just saying that it's transparency and providing that to our members?

Providing the changes we put forward are made, I don't see the issue. It's just about being transparent to our people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much.

We'll turn now to Mr. Richards for five minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Chief Bear, Ms. Dunville, and Mr. Long. I appreciate you all being here and sharing with us your experience.

Certainly from my understanding of what I've heard from you here today, and from what I've heard from other committee members as well, you're a shining example of the success you can see when you really work hard to develop businesses and opportunities and economic development on a first nation. My congratulations for the work you've done in creating transparency and accountability on your reserve, but also in terms of your economic development and what you've done to encourage that.

I'm new to the committee, so I wasn't there when the committee visited your community in May, but I understand from other members that they certainly discovered that one of the big parts of your success has been working on partnerships with other first nations and with non-first nations businesses and trying to develop your economic opportunities that way.

So I just want to congratulate you on that. I think it's just a great example for other first nations and other communities across Canada of what you can do when you set the stage to allow business to thrive and succeed. You might even say you're creating jobs, growth, and prosperity on your first nation.

But I do have some questions related to that, I think, to tie in with our subject matter today, Bill C-27. I'd like to just ask you a few of those questions. Hopefully we have time to get to all of them.

I'd like to get a little bit of a sense, in terms of the experience you've had, of the economic implications for band-owned businesses in terms of disclosing their financial information. What kinds of economic implications are there in that disclosure?

[Lisa Dunville]

As Chief Bear alluded to before, it goes back to the idea that you don't want to scare away private enterprise from partnering with first nations in that economic development activity. The idea is that if it's a requirement of the first nation to disclose certain information, we would never want to scope that into the private enterprise. Obviously, that might deter private enterprises from wanting to partner in business with the first nation. The key message is that we don't want to detract from or deter that economic growth and development of the first nation by inadvertently imposing some sort of restriction or requirement on private enterprises.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Given your experience, you wouldn't see that type of disclosure as undermining the competitiveness of the business, would you?

[Lisa Dunville]

Absolutely we would, actually.

In Canada there's no other requirement for private enterprises or private business owners to publicly disclose financial information and financial statements—for instance, CEO, CFO, and executive compensation. It's private information. It could contain competitive advantage information and things of that nature that other private enterprises are not required to disclose. Again, if I were a private business owner looking to partner with a first nation and I realized that this legislation would somehow cause me to now have to publicly disclose some of that information, obviously I would not be in favour of that.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

You've suggested some amendments and have distributed those to us. Obviously I haven't had a chance to look through them. I would assume that if these are concerns you have, then you have addressed those in your amendments. What specific changes are there that would address these?

[Lisa Dunville]

The main issue in dealing specifically with the scope of private enterprises is the use of the word “control” in the draft legislation or the original draft. Because of the definition of control and how it's used under generally accepted accounting principles, we can get into an interpretation where someone may assume that if a first nation has control or an economic interest in a private entity, then that would be scoped in. To clarify the bill, what we've said is that the wording should just follow what is required to be disclosed in the consolidated financial statements of the first nation, which would specifically exclude government business or enterprises or private enterprises. That is a requirement under generally accepted accounting principles. It's just cleaning up the language so there's no ambiguity in terms of what information you need to include when following the requirements of the bill.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I have some more questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Unfortunately, you're out of time. If I let you go, then I'd have a mutiny from others.

I appreciate committee members keeping to the time. Today, I think we had a great deal of success in terms of the two different groups of witnesses.

Chief Bear, we want to thank you and your team for coming today. We know that you have many things on your plate, so we certainly appreciate that you have taken the time to be with us. We look forward to hearing from you again at a later date.

Colleagues and committee members, we'll continue the review of this bill at our next meeting. We'll see you then. Thanks so much.

This meeting is adjourned.