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

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Would it be fair to say you wouldn't be able to accept the bill in its present form?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

It would be fair to say that in the present form I certainly would not accept it.

I believe they passed out what we're proposing. If the committee is prepared to accept that, we'd support it.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Rickford, for seven minutes.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Chief Bear, Murray, Lisa, for being here today and giving us a real, situational context, if you will, about how this could work, because it already is working.

I think what you described in your opening remarks, Chief Bear, was a history that suggests that this financial management and transparency has been a journey, one that started when you became the chief. As you disclosed, you were not so sure how that would evolve, but certainly, by all accounts, you've done a great job, so congratulations on that.

I want to explore this whole idea, and I'm glad you brought Lisa, by the way, as an accountant here, because we're talking about posting documents that could raise questions for members. As is often the case, particularly in accounting—as somebody who belongs to a couple of professional designations, and accounting isn't one of them—it's not necessarily a really quick and easy thing to understand.

So my question is this, Chief Bear, and perhaps I'd like to hear from you on this, Lisa. Can you tell this committee about some of the key practices that you and your council have taken, not just to demonstrate financial accountability and transparency of the nation, but also, Chief Bear and Lisa, to facilitate that?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Some of the practices?

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Yes, some of the practices.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

I have a couple of my councillors here as well, Councillor Royal and Councillor Eagle, in the back.

It's an expectation from our community mandate that we have to bring in unqualified audits. We're not to run deficits, so we always bring in a balanced budget. Certainly, everybody would love to run surpluses, but there are always all kinds of needs and limited resources, so we have to continue to move forward.

As far as the practices go, on October 30 of this month we'll be presenting the financial position of the first nation to our community members. Again, our community members will accept that and move and second it.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Do you have a public forum?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Yes, we have a public forum for this, and this is done annually every October.

There are some concerns with that, though. If you look at other levels of government, whether it be municipalities, provinces, etc., they get six months to do their audits. Our auditors—and you can maybe talk to this, Lisa—only get four months to do ours. But there is so much onerous reporting. I think that's one of the things you may want to look at extending, to be consistent and to treat first nations the same way you would any other level of government, to give us that six months. With all the onerous reporting requirements, a lot of first nations aren't able to deliver their audits on time. It's not because they don't want to. You ask the KPMGs and the Pricewaterhouses of this world. They will tell you they don't have enough time to make it happen, and that's what's happening right now. So I think you need to consider that extension of the six months, and be consistent with how other levels of government are being treated.

The other thing is this. Three years ago, I think it was, they changed us to public sector accounting. In the past it was the accrual method, where the community members could understand the statements. They will show your revenues, your expenses, and then the bottom line. That's no longer there, and now it's all under public sector accounting. The thing is, we're not like cities and towns; our communities are more like shareholders. It doesn't matter where they live, they're still a Whitecap member. You can leave a city or a town and you're no longer a member. The reporting should be done more in that style.

The end user is supposed to be the community member, so why would we want to share with them an audit or a financial statement that they don't understand? They don't understand the public sector accounting process, so—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

That was my point. It's just to get at that whole notion of user friendly.

I take your point, by the way, on the timeline piece, and I'd be happy to follow up and hear a little bit more about that.

What I'm interested in understanding is coming into that public forum. There's an example of how this information is disseminated and how it's dealt with. What other practices does the community take to translate what can be some fairly complicated information, certainly presented—no disrespect to the great profession of accounting—for people to be able to interact with it and match it with their issues or concerns, if you will?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

We have actually taken the public sector accounting piece and converted it so that members can understand it, because it is very important for them to understand how much revenue came in, what the expenses were, and what the bottom line is. That's very important for our people to understand. Even with our own chief and council, our salaries and expenses go through a council compensation commission. It's shared with the community. So all those processes are open and transparent.

I think now there has been talk about putting this on a website, but certainly we have to make sure that it is accessible to Whitecap members. I don't think it has to be accessible to the world.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I have just a final question, Chief Bear. My colleague is going to talk about business, but I'm just going to segue into that. Over the course of this 21 years, it strikes me that more and more of your community members have become very familiar with financial information. Do you think it has helped them? The extent and scope of your business activities in your community are known. Has that been an enabler for them to feel confident about entering into different kinds of businesses, either as sole proprietors or to build on the successes as band-owned and band-operated businesses in whole or in part?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Right now we don't have a lot of that entrepreneurial spirit that we want. We have had a business incubator inside the community trying to start that process so that we can get members interested in some other service delivery they could provide. That might be a concept—for example, if we have 680 employees and some of the businesses require dry cleaning. We're just doing that whole initiative right now as a business incubator.

The focus for us has been on creating a business-friendly environment first, and ensuring that the business community knows that when they come to Whitecap, they're going to be treated no differently than when they are off reserve. That's important.

The legislative change, the land tenure structure, having the commercial leasehold interests and residential leasehold interests—these are very important. By having a real property tax bylaw—we actually have the Province of Saskatchewan do the assessments for us through the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency—there's also redress when businesses don't like the assessment. There is a redress system when we apply our mill rate and give our tax notice, because while it's good to have a legislative change to enable us, through the First Nations Land Management Act, to attract business, we also need infrastructure to make that business happen. Therefore, we require the real property tax—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

The community members' level of comfort with your business activities is because you've built this capacity of understanding financial information.

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Absolutely.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you. Unfortunately, your time is up, Mr. Rickford. That seven minutes always does go too quickly.

Ms. Hughes, we'll turn to you now for the next five minutes.

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

Thank you.

If I have any time left, I'm going to share it with my colleague, Mr. Bevington.

We're talking about accountability here, and a comment was made a little while ago by, I believe, Ms. Block, who talked about the fact that the level of information given when asked wasn't coming forward. I find that interesting, because on this side of the House we've asked for information on Afghanistan, the budget, and E.coli, and we certainly haven't been getting it from the government. I find it strange that they are trying to push something like this here.

I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about capacity. You talked about how it was 21 years ago. I know that in many of my communities 21 years ago, things were different compared to what they are now. We have much more progressive chiefs now leading the way as well. I'm sure, based on what you've indicated, your community has had some difficulties, as have others, and for a lot of them it has been the capacity because the membership is small in some areas. They may not have the resources. For example, there are some communities at this point in time, even in today's day and age, that may not have the Internet, that may not have the resources to buy computers. Those are problem areas that that I see with respect to having to post this on the Internet.

I'm just wondering, because even with some of the non-first nations municipalities, there are differences in how they do certain things. We visited some first nations on other issues, and the way they dealt with it was through band resolutions or bylaws that they put in place.

Do you not think that the overall goal could still be achieved by ensuring that those accounting practices are done internally, and that they decide on how best to distribute that to their members, whether it's by mail or posted on the Internet? Do you think that people should be forced to put it on the website?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

I think the information should be for the members of the community. That's who the information should be for. That's who we should be accountable to, the Whitecap community members.

As for how each community gets that information to their members, it should be up to them. If it is going to be via the net, then there should be a pass code that they have to use, because it's information that is privileged to them as a Whitecap member.

That would be my answer, anyway, with regard to the Internet. It shouldn't be available to everyone. I don't think it's everybody's business what we're doing.

It's very important, though, that we share that audit with anybody providing resources to us, such as the government. We can share that audit with the government, not a problem, but it should be shared with the Whitecap members; another first nation, I don't think it's any of their business.

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

Now, as you've said, you certainly get funding from the government, and they get some resources. I'm sure that currently you are reporting to them on those funds now. Is that not the case?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

Absolutely.

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

So would this not be like a double duty?

[Chief Darcy M. Bear]

No, I don't think this is a double duty; I think this is ensuring that the members are getting the information. That's all this bill is doing. It's ensuring that the members are getting the information so that it doesn't matter....

As I said, if I drop dead walking out of here today and there's a leadership change, and the next leader says, “I'm not going to share the information with my community members, I'm just going to go on a spending spree”, there's the end of the Whitecap. That's happened. I've seen that happen time and again in Canada. It's happened to strong first nations. They go down just because of a change in leadership where they're not prepared to be accountable to the membership.

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

Chief, I have just one more question for you. When we see something like this here, do you think...in terms of the percentage of first nations, they should all be consulted on this, to decide whether or not this is something that should go forward?

If there are only maybe 20 first nations that think this is a good project to go on, that this is a good piece of legislation, I'm just wondering whether that should be imposed on every first nation when there is maybe a bigger percentage that says they're not in favour of it.