DIAND takes over Innu money management

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The federal Indian Affairs Department has hired the accounting firm KPMG to take over the Innu Nation'?s finances following an audit that revealed deficits.

The intervention applies to both the communities of Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu, with a combined population of 2,000.

Government officials won?t say how much the deficit is, the percentage the Innu are allegedly over budget, or the reason DIAND jumped immediately into imposing third-party management rather than taking the less drastic co-management approach first to balance the books.

Peter Penashue, president of the Innu Nation, along with Chief Simeon Tshakapesh of Davis Inlet and Chief Paul Rich of Sheshatshiu did not respond to our requests for an interview. They are reported elsewhere to be hostile to federal interference in their affairs.

Davis Inlet's executive director said he would not comment on the issue because in talking to the press 'one thing leads to another.'

Simon Osmond, a member of the Sheshatshiu community who works with the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs, said he has no official standing but speaking as an individual he was highly critical of Indian Affairs. He seemed embarrassed that his people were being held up before the rest of Canada as a group that needs federal supervision.

In his community, 'a lot of people are saying that it's more or less a tactic by the federal government to show that the Native people are being incompetent.'

Osmond says they fear that third-party management will mean the federal government will use it as a delaying tactic on other commitments it has made to the Innu people.

The Innu are supposed to be getting registered status under the Indian Act, so they can get health and education benefits comparable to other Aboriginal people, but according to Osmond the government 'has been pushing it back.' Registration was supposed to be in February, then it was March, he said.

Osmond said that from his own point of view 'it seems like [the federal government is] trying to minimize what's going on up there. Even though they have a federal responsibility to help them as much as possible, they're holding back on that.

"Like Davis Inlet was supposed to be moving in the early 1990s . . . it still hasn't been done. . . . One minute they say, 'OK, we'll do it;' next minute when there's no more press, there's no more media on it, they let it go until the press comes back into it again, then they start saying, 'oh, we're doing this, we're doing that,' . . . until the picture's over."

Osmond said every group has management problems and the federal government should get its own fiscal affairs in order before criticizing.

He would also like to know how much of the $4 billion that Indian Affairs administers on behalf of Indian people actually reaches them. He pointed to the high salaries that mostly non-Indian people in the department get to carry out a fidiciary duty to the people 'that is not being met.'

"The audits were done at the end of the last fiscal year (March 31, 2000) and we received them over the summer," said Ian Gray, the acting director of the Newfoundland and Labrador secretariat within Indian Affairs.

"We don't normally disclose [the amount of deficit]. That's something that's sort of a confidence with the communities and Canada. So we don't discuss the contents of the audit at all."

Gray confirmed that department policy was to intervene in some way when a deficit exceeds eight per cent.

The Innu currently get about $10 million a year from DIAND, with $7 million going to Sheshatshiu and $3 million going to the Mushuau Innu at Davis Inlet, according to Gray.

He denied that the third-party management situation would delay any programs or services previously committed to by DIAND. "We're proceeding with the relocation and we're proceeding with registration and reserve creation."

Gray said with respect to relocation of the Davis Inlet people, "we're sculing the completion of the infrastructure by the end of the building season, about October, 2002." This is two years longer than originally planned, he said.

As for band status, "we've targeted two years. So we're expecting that around the same time. Registration may occur a lot earlier than that, but in terms of getting registration and all the land added to the reserve and so on, we've targeted two years." That brings it to around the end of 2002, he said.

With third-party management in place, Gray concedes that the Innu have found it 'difficult'. They think that it's overkill, perhaps that we didn't need to go that far."

Asked why the department chose to impose the highest form of financial intervention, Gray said, "We were really attempting to just apply normal DIAND approaches to the situation. . . . We believed in our judgment this was the best approach to take."