OTTAWA — In her 28th day of a hunger strike, Chief Theresa Spence shrugged off as a “distraction” a scathing federal audit that shows the Attawapiskat band council failed to keep basic records for how it spent more than $100 million in federal funds.The accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche found “no evidence of due diligence in the use of public funds, including the use of funds for housing” in its review of Attawapiskat’s books for a six-and-a-half-year period.
The auditors were called in last year at the height of the Attawapiskat housing crisis when Spence’s declaration of an emergency grabbed Canadians’ attention.
Released Monday by the Conservative government, the audit does not allege fraudulent activity but says more than 400 of the transactions it reviewed lacked proper — or most of the time, any—supporting paperwork or receipts.
Page after page of the report shows spending on contracts or services where the vendors are “unknown” or the documentation is questionable or non-existent.
“An average of 81 per cent of files did not have adequate supporting documents and over 60 per cent had no documentation of the reason for payment,” said the firm. In an Aug. 28 letter to Spence, it called the lack of records “inappropriate for any recipient of public funds.”
NDP MP Charlie Angus, reached in his northern Ontario riding that includes Attawapiskat, said the audit identified records-keeping problems on the both the federal government’s and the Attawapiskat band council’s sides, but he said “there’s no smoking gun here.”
“They’re not saying somebody took the money to go off to Florida,” said Angus. He and others suspected the timing of the audit’s release before Friday’s key meeting with aboriginal leaders, Spence among them, was a cynical move to discredit her.
The audit says the band council received about $104 million from the federal government between April 1, 2005 and Nov. 30, 2011 for housing, infrastructure, education and administration.
That amount doesn’t include another $13 million Ottawa provided after Nov. 30, 2011, which included $3.75 million to boost housing when Attawapiskat’s shabby, mouldy, overcrowded accommodations were headline news.
The federal Conservative government, which was leery of releasing the audit for fear it would inflame tensions before Friday’s meeting with First Nations leaders and Spence, said little after the audit’s release.
“The independent audit from Deloitte and Touche LLP speaks for itself, and we accept its conclusions and recommendations,” said Jan O’Driscoll, spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan.
Spence and her support team were defiant.
In a written statement, they called the audit “no more than a distraction of (sic) the true issue and (an attempt) to discredit Chief Spence who is willing to lay down her life for a larger cause.”
Spence did not speak to reporters or directly address the audit’s findings. “I remain steadfast on my journey and will not allow any distractions at this time to waiver the goal set forth,” she said in the statement.
Instead, Spence appeared to set out new demands on top of her call for a meeting between First Nations leaders, the prime minister and the Governor General.
Spence took up the demand of the Idle No More grassroots protest movement for the repeal of federal budget measures “related to lands” — an apparent reference to the easing of voting rules in order to lease reserve land — and unspecified measures to implement aboriginal and treaty rights in the constitution as well as “a process of resource revenue sharing for indigenous peoples.”
Spence’s many supporters said the audit did not hurt the credibility of the woman who was elected Attawapiskat chief in August 2010, and was deputy chief July 2007 to Sept 2010.
Ryerson University professor Pam Palmater, a lawyer who has worked on aboriginal issues for the federal government, told reporters the audit actually showed that matters improved under Spence’s tenure at the top.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Tonda MacCharles
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