Election results questionable

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The Saskatchewan government is continuing to withhold funding to the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS) and is refusing to recognize the MNS provincial council that was sworn into office on Oct. 7 after a review conducted by former provincial chief electoral officer Keith Lampard found a number of problems with the way the group ran its May 26 election.

With some of the complaints received, Lampard found no merit in the allegations being made, with others he found the complaints were valid but the questionable activities had no bearing on the final results of the election. Some of the complaints, however, dealt with circumstances so questionable they should have rendered the results of the vote at the polling stations in question invalid, altering the final results of the election.

These complaints ranged from having polling locations moved without notifying community members to having more than a hundred names added to a voters' list by the chief electoral officer when no one in the community, not even the post mistress at the post office where the people claim to have addresses, had ever heard of them. Scrutineers reported large numbers of votes being cast by non-Metis people; large numbers of signatures in poll books appear to have been written by the same person; 150 people voted at a poll in an inactive local when only 10 people voted there in the last election when the local was still active; a local with no eligible voters had 37 ballots cast; and addresses of bowling alleys and ball diamonds were listed in poll books as places of residence of those casting votes.

One particularly interesting complaint looked into by Lampard surrounded the vote in Cando, a small village between North Battleford and Biggar. Although estimates put the number of Metis people living in the community at eight or nine, the voters' list for the local had 71 names on it. Forty-five of those names could be identified by Metis people in the area. Included in those 45 was the name of one person who had been dead for three years-their name was listed twice. Another person, listed three times, moved to Alberta two years ago. The remaining 40 names included three more dead people, one person who has lived in Ontario for 20 years, two status Indians, one person currently in prison, and a number of people who no longer lived in the area.

Once these names were removed, only 10 eligible voters were left on the list, yet 26 of these people were listed in the poll books as having voted on election day.

In addition to these 26 names, 67 other names not on the voters' list are listed in the poll book as having voted in Cando.

In the end, Keith Lampard concluded that these types of problems meant that the province and the Metis people couldn't trust the results of the election.

Those results showed that presidential candidate Dwayne Roth had won the election, and Roth has assumed leadership of the MNS despite the concerns raised about the validity of the outcome. Repeated attempts to talk to Roth about the Lampard report and the ongoing controversy surrounding the election have been unsuccessful, but he has expressed his views many times through a series of press releases. In these statements he has called Lampard's review of the election a "witch hunt" and the report a "one-sided account based on hearsay."

Two days after the Nov. 1 release of Lampard's report, Roth announced that the MNS has filed legal action in the Court of Queen's Bench against both Lampard and the provincial government, seeking general damages in excess of $410,000-the amount of the frozen provincial funding-for their "callous disregard for the rights of the plaintiff, including its right to self-determination as recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, as part of a scheme designed to undermine the rights of the plaintiff and its citizenship."

Roth, who is acting as lawyer for the MNS in the case, has also undertaken a symolic walk from Saskatoon to Regina to protest the government's stand. Roth is expected to arrive in Regina on Nov. 16, the 119th anniversary of the hanging of Louis Riel and is calling the walk the beginning of a modern day Metis rebellion.

In the meantime, Robert Doucette and Alex Maurice, the other two candidates who ran for the presidency of the MNS during the election, have formed a provisional Metis council. The goal of the group, Doucette said, is to force a new election for Saskatchewan's Metis people and to see that anyone who committed electoral fraud during the recent election faces charges.

The group is also hoping to meet with the province but, according to Maynard Sonntag, minister of First Nations and Metis Relations, that won't be happening anytime soon.

Sonntag said before he sits down to talk to any of the presidntial candidates he first wants to meet with unelected Metis leaders from across the province in order to determine what role, if any, the government should play in ensuring Metis people get a fair and independent election.

"What I don't want to do is to be in any position of even perceived bias right now because as the minister responsible I have the responsibility to Metis people across the province," Sonntag said.

"The consultation needs to start happening very, very quickly because I don't think we can leave this to simmer. We need to try to find a resolution."