“It’s a completely unnecessary bill. It’s an exercise in futility. It doesn’t serve anyone’s purpose except the Conservative government’s purpose to try to make First Nations look like they have more money than they do, or look like the reason for their poverty is somehow mismanagement,” Ryerson University professor Pamela Palmater told The Hill Times last week.
The House Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Committee will be studying the bill for the first time this week since the bill received second reading in June.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, B.C.) will appear before the committee to discuss the bill on Oct. 15.
The bill aims to provide more “transparency and accountability” when it comes to First Nations governments’ salaries and expenses.
“The bill builds on our government’s ongoing commitment to ensuring First Nations have strong, transparent, and accountable governments. It will also lead to decreasing the reporting burden for First Nations,” Mr. Duncan said when introducing the bill in the House.
First Nations are already required to submit and publicly release salary information, but the bill adds detailed expense reports and First Nations’ audited consolidated financial statements to the list of disclosures.
First Nations would also have to disclose financial information from band-owned businesses that don’t receive funding from the federal government. The figures would be posted on the Aboriginal Affairs departmental website as the information is received. Under the bill, First Nations are required to provide the information upon request to its members within 120 days and maintain the information on their own website for 10 years.
If First Nations governments fail to meet the act’s requirements, members and “any person, including the minister” are able to go to court to obtain the information.
The bill allows the Aboriginal Affairs minister to withhold or terminate funds to First Nations.
Conservative MP Kelly Block (Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Sask.) first introduced this bill in the last Parliament as a private member’s bill, C-575, with the same goals. It passed second reading and was referred to the House Aboriginal Affairs Committee, but died on the Order Paper when the election was called.
Prof. Palmater, a Mi’kmaq lawyer who recently ran unsuccessfully against Shawn Atleo for national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said the bill does not serve First Nations’ purposes and, despite Mr. Duncan’s comment that the bill would not put an added reporting burden, it will do just that.
Prof. Palmater said the bill panders to the Conservative base and to rhetoric around accountability and transparency and is a distraction from other issues the government is ignoring, such as lack of funding for education and clean water. She said the government is using Bill C-27 to focus the conversation on First Nations as not being accountable and want to be seen to be doing something on the issue.
“The feds are getting hammered right now for funding cuts, lack of funding for education and housing, there’s been a lot of media on it lately,” she said.
NDP MP Jean Crowder (Nanaimo-Cowichan, B.C.), her party’s aboriginal affairs critic, agreed.
“I don’t think this bill, in particular, does anything to increase accountability, from First Nations chiefs, and council to the people who elect them. They’re already required to produce audited financial statements. The minister can already require them to release that so this isn’t something that can’t already be organized by the minister,” she told The Hill Times.
In a backgrounder, the federal government said the bill is necessary because of “complaints from community members and recent media attention” to the “lack of availability of financial information in some First Nations.”
In a speech during second reading in June on Bill C-27, Mr. Duncan said the department receives “many complaints.”
“Currently, the only recourse for community members who are denied access to a First Nations audited consolidated financial statement is to appeal to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. We receive many complaints,” Mr. Duncan said in the Commons.
“Some First Nations do not willingly release such information when requested,” Mr. Duncan said. “In these cases, the only option for complainants at the moment is to bring the issue to my attention. The minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has sole authority to compel a First Nation to release financial information. This puts me in the position of perpetuating a sense of paternalism that both First Nations and our government are working to overcome. As it is now, when First Nation members raise concerns about the non-disclosure of financial information, we respond. My officials work with the band governments to have it released, and if these efforts fail, the department then provides the information directly to the individual member who is requesting it.”
Mr. Duncan said the system is “unnecessarily complicated” and “undemocratic” as it is. “It is entirely reasonable for First Nation members to expect their governments to meet the same basic accountability standards as other governments in Canada,” he said.
Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, Ont.), her party’s aboriginal affairs critic, said that she hasn’t heard First Nations asking for changes and criticized the government for failing to consult with the people this bill will affect.
“I’ve never been able to figure out the motivation for just about anything they do. It seems to be unfortunately feeding into stereotypes and it is a real problem in the way they continue to ignore the duty to consult, the free, prior and informed consent on anything to do with First Nations, keeping with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it is more paternalism is what it looks like,” she said. “I’m not aware of First Nations community members who are asking for this.”
Prof. Palmater said the government’s approach to First Nations is “overwhelming and aggressive.” There are currently four government bills on the Order Paper affecting First Nations, the highest in Canadian history, she said.
“They’re all almost unanimously rejected by First Nations, so it’s being imposed against our collective will essentially and we have absolutely no say. None of these bills serve First Nations purposes, they tend to serve Conservative purposes,” she said.
Darcy Bear, chief of the Whitecap Dakota First Nation, in a press release welcomed the bill, however. “This bill will mean more accountability of First Nation leaders to our people,” he said. “Transparent and accountable First Nation governments support a strong environment for investment leading to greater economic development.”
In a preliminary analysis of the bill, however, the Assembly of First Nations said that the standards in this bill “surpass those for elected officials in many other jurisdictions” and the consequences are “overly punitive.”
“In addition, the requirements do not take into account capacity or existing reporting burdens faced by First Nation governments,” the AFN said. “Implementing provisions in Bill C-27 could endanger the provision of key and core services to First Nation citizens if the information required is not provided.”
The Canadian Bar Association is also against the bill and believes it should not pass. In a letter to Mr. Duncan, Aimée Craft, chair of the CBA’s national aboriginal law section said the bill would decrease First Nations’ capacity “to assume control over their own affairs” and “fails to address larger systemic issues of funding and responsibility for those issues.”
Further, while First Nations agree that accountability and transparency are top priorities, Bill C-27 does not achieve those goals, Ms. Craft said.
“In principle, all parties agree that accountability and transparency of First Nations’ elected officials is a top priority. Indeed, some First Nations have had financial regulations and budgetary laws for decades, adopted under their own constitutions or customary laws,” she said. “Whether this proposed legislation would achieve the goal of accountability and transparency in an appropriate manner is a different question. Given First Nations’ inherent right to self-governance, dictating reporting requirements without sufficient consultation with First Nations is problematic. It fails to recognize the unique constitutional arrangements between First Nations and the federal government, and does little to move away from the paternalism which has historically defined this relationship.”
Prof. Palmater took issue with the requirement for First Nations to disclose financial information about privately-owned businesses on reserves.
Mr. Duncan said it would make it easier for investors to go into joint ventures with First Nations under the rules of Bill C-27.
Ms. Bennett said Bill C-27 could open First Nations’ businesses up to “predatory practices” and could be “devastating.” She said she’s hopeful the Conservative members of the Aboriginal Affairs Committee will allow amendments to the bill.
Ms. Crowder said the committee hearings “will be interesting once we get the final witness list,” but is unsure whether the government is amenable to amendments.
Prof. Palmater said there’s nothing in the bill that can be fixed, and it should not pass. She said, however, that she “has no doubt” it will pass, and there could be legal challenges against it.
Meanwhile, in a 2002 report, then-auditor general Sheila Fraser recommended that “unnecessary or duplicative reporting requirements should be dropped,” and in a follow-up to measure progress in her 2011 report, she noted the government made “unsatisfactory” progress. The report noted that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs received more than 60,000 reports annually from 600 First Nations communities who have to make 168 reports to four federal departments a year, in addition to the audited financial report and that “many of the reports were unnecessary and were not in fact used by the federal organizations.”
In addition, the report said, “First Nations officials with whom we spoke also told us that they had not seen a reduction in reporting requirements since our last audit, and many indicated that the reporting burden has increased in recent years.”
In her 2011 report, Ms. Fraser said her office was “concerned about the burden associated with the federal reporting requirements, particularly related to INAC’s contribution agreements with First Nations. Many initiatives with the potential to streamline reporting have been started but have not resulted in meaningful improvement.”
More specifically, the report said it’s still unclear “whether this degree of reporting helps make First Nations accountable, or whether it assists either the Department or First Nations with their management responsibilities. First Nations continue to spend time and resources to complete reports for INAC, but some of these reports may serve little purpose and may interfere with First Nations’ ability to meet the needs of their members.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: BEA VONGDOUANGCHANH
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