Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 5th, 2012

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

Thanks very much.

Following up on my colleague's question, this bill was brought forward as a solution to a problem, but it sounds as though this problem has never been measured in terms of the number of inquiries and in terms of lack of transparency and, as my colleague has said, the money it has cost. Once this bill is in place, should it be in place, how will you know if it's working or not if you have not been keeping any numbers?

What I believe you have been saying to us is that you think the number of requests will diminish because of this legislated transparency law, but you don't have any numbers to compare with.

[Brenda Kustra]

As I indicated, we don't normally keep track of the statistics, the number of phone calls and the number of visits from first nations members to regional offices. I did indicate in my remarks that one of the regions did report to us that they had between 25 and 30. That is because that region happened to be keeping track of it. One of the things that I think—

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

If you remember all of our questioning before that, was that all for one community? In a region, were those 20 complaints about one first nation, or were they about 20 different first nations? In terms of what happens, if this is now legislated....

It's quite odd that there are no numbers. It is the worst kind of situation when you are trying to solve a problem and you don't even know the extent of the problem. How will you know if you are winning?

[Brenda Kustra]

The information about the 25 to 30 requests that came in from one region were for a variety of communities. It wasn't 25 requests from one community. Quite often, one member of a community will come forward on behalf of other members in the community to request access to the financial information—

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

Sometimes that same member comes forward 20 times.

[Brenda Kustra]

Yes, and—

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

And you have no idea what that is.

[Brenda Kustra]

I don't have the details.

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

I simply can't imagine how that can be a way to run anything, but if....

Chief Darcy Bear had three very distinct concerns. One was separating salaries and remuneration, taking expenses out of that and making sure that was clear. He also had real concern about the band-owned businesses. He had real concerns that the transparency needed to be to his members, not to all Canadians, because that is the relationship and the responsibility of the chief in council.

You didn't even mention your amendments in your initial remarks. Do the government amendments deal with all of Chief Darcy Bear's concerns? Your amendment G-2 says, “...acting in their capacity as such and in any other capacity, including their personal capacity”. Can you explain what that means?

[Brenda Kustra]

As a point of clarification, Mr. Chair, with respect to the discussion of amendments, is that a discussion and a question and answer that would be properly addressed when we get to that specific amendment in the clause-by-clause study?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you for that. I think that would be helpful. The more we eat up time now, the more we will reduce the time we are.... We're going to continue until we are finished. Those questions would be better addressed during the clause-by-clause period. The witness is correct.

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

I think we did ask the officials to come with a broad.... That's the reason we were here. Have the government amendments addressed the concerns we've heard since May?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

That's exactly what we'll be able to ask during that time. We'll give ample opportunity. The witnesses have agreed to stay during the clause-by-clause portion of the time.

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

Okay. This is bizarre, but anyway, okay.

Do you believe that the bill, as amended by the government, addresses the three concerns of Chief Darcy Bear?

[Brenda Kustra]

I'm pleased to share with the committee that in fact we have been working with Chief Darcy Bear to find a way to address the issues that Chief Bear has raised regarding the split of salary and expenses, as you have correctly indicated. Chief Bear was quite concerned that the tally of salary and expenses would be totalled and would misrepresent the actual value of the salary of elected officials as opposed to the expenses that were incurred in implementing their duties.

With respect to the band-owned businesses, I did make reference in my comments to the clarity that we need in the bill in order to ensure that the bill is not interpreted as requiring band-owned businesses to publish their financial statements. That was not the intention, and I do believe that—

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

“Aggregated”, in the language you've used, means what?

[Brenda Kustra]

It means rolled up, in exactly the same way the financial statements are prepared right now. If we were to take Chief Darcy Bear and the Whitecap First Nation as an example, the financial statements that are submitted right now, to the department, display band-owned businesses in a certain fashion. That would not change under this legislation.

However, Chief Bear thought that there was a possibility that the clause in the legislation could be interpreted to require full public disclosure of band-owned financial businesses, and I believe that when we do get an opportunity to look at the revised wording around the treatment of band-owned businesses and band entities, you will see that the issue has been addressed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much. We'll now turn to Mr. Rickford again.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses here today.

I have a couple of questions to hopefully close out, certainly from our perspectives, some residual issues.

For most of the witnesses, if not all, one of the questions I had put may be directed to you, Karl, more than to the others. I had said that it seems to me that for many first nations communities, the requirements for producing the financial reports would in fact not be redundant. It was a function of just posting them. There were many first nations who responsibly manage this task, and indeed responsibly manage their financial affairs.

To that extent, would you agree that the public disclosure of these statements would not just enable private investors and the general public but more importantly reduce or hopefully eliminate, as a superordinate goal, any residual suspicion or point of contention with the chief and council simply by reporting and making those documents accessible?

[Brenda Kustra]

If I may, I'll take—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

By the way, the answer has been yes, but I want to hear from the department officials, because it's consistent with the line of questioning from my colleagues, which I completely appreciate.

[Brenda Kustra]

The answer is definitely yes. The fact that this information would be publicly available reduces all of the speculation, the rumour mongering, all of the misinformation that is around with respect to not only chief and council salaries but also the extent to which first nations governments are funded by clearly identifying the revenues and expenditures by program, consistently reported for every first nation across the country and publicly available. It will effectively, I hope, dispel the misinformation and rumours that are out there.

First nations leaders will be able to point to the statements that are publicly available and advise people to just look at the statement for the information and see that there's nothing hidden and it's readily available to everyone.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

That's important, because regardless of who we've had here making contributions as witnesses, there was consensus around that point. We may disagree about how that presented itself, how it was accessible to different pathways, but consistently this was identified as something of benefit in those regards.

Hopefully, this will be dealt with in the next fiscal year. There is a time afterward within which the communities would have to prepare, so we still have a fair amount of time before that requirement would be given effect.

However, there has been some concern about non-compliance. Karl, perhaps you could clear up what the implications are of non-compliance. Could you clarify for us whether it would include health and safety funding, and whether, in a worst-case scenario, funding could be restored if it ever came to be necessary?

[Karl Jacques, Senior Counsel, Department of Justice]

With regard to the funding, maybe Brenda could determine which exact funding would be.... Basically, it's the band support funding that may be retained.

However, the measures in this act are measures that are already in place in the contribution agreements. There is nothing new in here. There's similar legislation in other provinces that have that kind of withholding of funding for not reporting or not meeting some disclosure or reporting obligations.

These are discretionary; you don't need to go to court. You don't need these... Basically, any member could.... Although there is a possibility to go to court for that, that's the last resort. You don't have to do it. Things could obviously be dealt with on a case-by-case basis between the member and the—

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.