Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 29th, 2012

[Terry Goodtrack]

Again, that's an issue of the accountability of first nations to their citizens. The question is, if they're not getting that information....

I mean, the ultimate political accountability, which was mentioned earlier, is the election process. That's the ultimate political accountability. There are other issues that come into play when you're taking a look at it, and part of it is not just financial; it's performance. What exactly was achieved? To some degree, you have to try to include that in an annual report.

As I mentioned earlier, at AFOA Canada what we're trying to do with this pilot project is to better explain audited financial statements to community members, while at the same time increasing the financial literacy of community members. We're actually trying to solve this as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

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

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

Thank you very much for your input.

I think it's fine for the other side to talk about accountability and transparency, but that's all they've been doing. Again, if there have been 200 complaints, there hasn't been any indication of whether this was from one person, two people, or three people. To say we're acting on all of these complaints without really being transparent as to how many people have made that complaint I think is not really going in the right direction. It's not providing the proper information for people to make a decision on a bill that's so important.

You answered one question that I had, which was whether Bill C-27 would result in reductions in reporting requirements. If I remember correctly from your initial report, you indicated it would actually add to the administrative burden.

Mr. Clarke mentioned all of these expenses that had been incurred, and some that may have been reimbursed. However, I think when you're looking from first nation to first nation—and it would depend from chief to chief, or council, as to whether they are actively involved in doing other things—you can't really say, “Oh my gosh, he spent $30,000 and this one only spent $10,000.” One chief may have been very active. I think we have to be careful as to how these expenses are done up.

There is a piece in here about the fact that they could be denied funding if they don't divulge this information and they don't have it on the website. For someone who has provided all the information to a department that they have actually used the money wisely, I wonder whether they should be denied that funding in order to continue the business of the day for their first nation. Have you seen this occur on a municipal basis, for example, where a municipality has not put down the breakdown of whatever on their website. Should they be denied funding? Do you think that is equal?

Based on the information you've provided, it's almost as if this is not equal to what is already happening out there, and it's kind of discriminatory.

[Terry Goodtrack]

That's quite a few questions.

The thing that really concerns me about the administrative burden is that over time we tend to add a requirement and another requirement. It may be one schedule; it may be one whatever. Over a period of time, there are quite a few of these schedules, but there isn't the increase in resources that come with that. So it puts a lot of pressure on the capacity of a first nation. With this, you have these cuts to the tribal council advisory services going on.

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

That has been raised in my communities as well, the importance the tribal councils have in assisting first nations to be accountable to their members.

[Terry Goodtrack]

Right. With the cuts, you don't have anybody to provide that advice.You could actually destabilize the governance, the first nation capacity. You do the cuts, and there's nobody to provide the advice. Then what happens? Potentially you get into health and safety issues, because the first nation government isn't able to operate. That's probably one of the biggest administrative burdens that could occur.

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

I'm going to give the rest of my time to Jean.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, and my thanks to the witnesses.

I have a minute and a half and way too many questions.

As to resources, I know that you offer training, education, and support to first nations for building capacity. What's your experience in the ability of individual nations to pay for those services?

[Dana Soonias]

One of the things that we've noticed and that accounting firms have let us know is that there is a reduction in the amount of adjusting entries in the communities that have these individuals on staff, or through our organization and our CAFMs, our certified managers. That's an example of the things we're noticing. That's just one example; there are many others similar to that.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

In effect, what we're hearing anecdotally is that first nations are struggling to do capacity development because they simply don't have the funds for that kind of education and training.

[Terry Goodtrack]

Yes. I had to present at the C.D. Howe Institute a couple of weeks ago on accountability. A first nation asked that question directly. He said they couldn't afford to take the courses because they didn't have the ability.

Some of these cuts will limit the discretionary funding. The first thing that goes, typically, is training. That's why this really concerns me, the administrative burden and these reductions in funding at the same time. This could potentially destabilize first nations governments, some of them, and cause health and safety issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

We're going to turn to Mr. Rickford now for the final five minutes.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

First of all, these five- and seven-minute things don't give us enough of an opportunity to congratulate you on the important work you do. In a previous life, I served as legal counsel for a number of first nations communities and authorities. I'm very familiar with the important contributions you make with member communities, certainly in the areas of transparency and accountability around financial reporting.

I want to go back to a question I posed to a witness a couple of meetings ago. I think my colleague Mr. Wilks alluded to it earlier.

I get the sense, gentlemen, that part of the value of this exercise is that there are a number of first nations communities that are doing the very best they can to meet the reporting requirements to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and they are evolving for that kind of disclosure to their community members directly. I posed the question, isn't it true that probably in a number of cases, perhaps the majority, this is about the chief and council reporting certain things, particularly around remuneration and expenses? We've gone through an exercise of being more clear on that through some amendments from the Whitecap First Nation that we're strongly considering as a government. It's to put it out there for their communities to clear up any confusion or to clear up any issues that may be present but are not actually true.

In short, they're putting it out there for their protection, but I don't think that quite does it justice. They're actually dealing with their accountability as elected members by just putting it out there.

Does that resonate with you, Terry?

[Terry Goodtrack]

Yes. We support the principles of transparent disclosure. As I mentioned earlier, that's what we do. When we do capacity building—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Is it true, then, that part of this exercise has value to the extent that it puts it out there, and for a number of communities, for whatever reasons, that information is available to those members? This isn't so much about a particular set of circumstances where there may be some kind of corruption. It's a simple exercise in them reporting, and it's transparent by virtue of it being accessible, providing it's understood—and I'll segue into that as my second question.

[Terry Goodtrack]

To address your question, you almost have to go back a little bit to the discussion you had about Muskeg Lake. It was Muskeg Lake's choice as to what those accountability measures were—whether to put it on the Internet, whether they told community members.... They had their own accountability framework between the first nation and its citizens.

Here we have a situation where we're not sure what the comparable items are. What I try to convey is just to get a comparable, such as other like entities. We support transparency. We support disclosure. We support the notion of accountability.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

We've heard that from you before, and I appreciate that advice and counsel.

I just want to switch channels here on one final thing, and that is about the presentation of these documents and notes. As people with expertise in this area, do you have some helpful tips for communities? We have heard from witnesses who are very enthusiastic, grassroots community members who have come to us for this kind of thing, but the next step in the analysis—and I think Jean alluded to it earlier in a question—is, do you have some advice about how these documents, for people who never read pro formas or consolidated information and/or notes, might be thoughtfully presented to them?

[Terry Goodtrack]

That's exactly why we have that pilot project with the first nation in northern Manitoba that I referred to earlier, with Mathias Colomb, because what we're trying to do there—as I mentioned earlier, it's gotten to a point now where audited financial statements are extremely difficult to interpret. We're trying to do a pilot project that more clearly explains these financial statements and performance information to community citizens. At the same time, we're trying to increase the financial literacy of citizens. They go hand in hand.

I think those are vital projects that we're outlining. We're partnering on that project with two organizations, and we're hoping it gets funded. One of them is SEDI, which is run by the TD fund out of Toronto, and the second organization we're partnering with is the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative.

We believe in strategic partnerships to solve these complex issues. We have a conference every year, and this year it's February 12 to 14, 2013. I invite you to come. What we're talking about there is building relationships, discovering solutions to complex issues. This is a complex issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much. We really appreciate your testimony today. You're absolutely right, these are complex issues. And certainly you have brought information in your testimony that's valuable to this committee. Again, thank you so much for coming.

Colleagues, we have a number of things to burn through in terms of committee business. We're going to go in camera to talk about motions. As well, we have some issues about future witnesses and different things.

We'll now go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]