Hello. I'm Stan Bear. I'm from Peguis First Nation. I was born and raised on Peguis, and l left the community many years ago now.
I am an entrepreneur. I have been running a management company in the private sector for almost 20 years. One of the activities we have been doing for the last 11 or 12 years is third party management. It is a component in our company. We do co-management facility. I have a team of financial experts and project managers.
I speak here today also as a first nation indigenous person who has seen over the years, right from childhood to the present, how our communities are.... I appreciate Loretta Burnstick's comment in regard to looking at the core issues, the fundamentals in our community.
Again, this is my perception. What I see is a lack, over the years as we progress, of a code of ethics and of adhering to that code of ethics with our indigenous values. With the current system and the default policy it's centred around, there are no repercussions for breaking a code of ethics. In the past, prior to the Europeans coming, there were consequences, and it wasn't a slap on the wrist or whatever. There were always consequences if you broke certain codes.
In regard to the default management, after talking to Wayne Helgason and thinking about it a lot more, I equate the whole thing.... My wife is from Brazil, and they're going through that whole issue of political corruption, where the institute is being questioned. I'm very knowledgeable of that process, and making the people accountable is difficult. I talk to my wife. As I say, she's from Brazil, where it's very similar to first nations indigenous people's communities in that corruption becomes a part of culture. You do not know the difference between right and wrong.
It was rather interesting, even with the capacity building. My wife has friends who were university-educated in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, just as first nations people are educated in institutions outside our communities. You can have capacity, but if you're operating in a cosmos or an area where there's no right or wrong, and no prosecution of doing right or wrong, then you can have professional people with capacity who break the rules.
Hence, when I was looking, I was surprised that the federal government has the Conflict of Interest Act, the provincial government has a conflict of interest act, the municipalities have conflict of interest acts, where there's prosecution should someone break these instruments. There are repercussions. If they have a strong conflict of interest act.... Brazil has a conflict of interest act, but they conveniently take out certain clauses or they don't prosecute. There's no accountability to enforce a policy.
First nations have policies, and you can have policies, laws, and the whole thing, but if they're not implemented or there's no consequence, the problem still continues.
I think one of the key issues is governance. You have to have strong governance structures in order to build capacity. You can have professionals in the administration aspect of it, and if there are no boundaries set in a code of ethics, like we traditionally had, there will be a lot of grey areas. In regard to a first nation indigenous person in an election, with social media nowadays, you could have documentation showing outright misappropriation of funds, and the individuals could get elected because the people don't know what is right and wrong.
That barrier is broken. I'm not saying it's happening in all the communities, because a lot of the communities aren't affected. They don't need rules or regulations or whatever, but they have that code of ethics still in there, and they practise it. We work with a lot of communities that are not under third party management. They hire financial advisers just to do the areas where they're weak. Those communities are firmly grounded in their traditional values, compared with other communities that are not.
Let's say the policy cannot be blanket, but creating an instrument where there are consequences would seriously help even the default management policy. They may have it, but I would say if there are consequences, they may not even use it in the future.
Those are my opening comments. I'll turn the floor to Lorne.