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Where did all the money go to Attawapiskat?


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http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/07/john-ivison-whatever-the-canadian-state-cedes-to-theresa-spence-it-will-never-be-enough/

At a time where Theresa Spence is righteously crusading for a fatter ride on the gravy train, I found it interesting how little she's held accountable for her band's management of the Attawapiskat reserve. Canadians need to shell out hundreds of millions for a craphole town of 2000 in the middle of nowhere, and it seems that she and her band don't have to tell anyone what the money's for or where it went.

Yep...I think I know everything I need to know about this slob.

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She's 100% right that this audit news is a distraction. But it's also 100% her fault. She wanted all this attention with her detox diet and when people looked into how she ran her reserve they found lots of damning stuff.

This audit will be what people are talking about Monday not any way to make the lives of FN people better

Edited by Boges
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Sounds pretty appalling. I can't imagine why she wold do that to her people when they are suffering though. Better wait until all the facts are in before second-guessing. This government is very sneaky and underhanded. Not like previous governments

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As soon as it becomes available the report should have been released by the government. What we have been hearing for the last few weeks was the harsh treatment that the natives endured at the hands of the government and how we should be sympathetic to their cause so essentially we have been receiving a flood of one sided news, suddenly the other side is presented in the form of a report and Theresa Spence is ducking the media. Her people are claiming that the news is one sided, well it has been and strongly in their favour and now they are complaining that the Canadian people are getting a glimpse of the mismanagement that is going on and their chief complaint seems to be that its none of our business what they do with OUR money, its our job to hand them as much as they want with no accountability attached because of historic grievances that most of us were not alive to be responsible for. If any federal department handled their business the same way, people would demand action instead of throwing more money down in to organization that has zero accountability.

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Canadians need to shell out hundreds of millions for a craphole town of 2000 in the middle of nowhere, and it seems that she and her band don't have to tell anyone what the money's for or where it went.

Yep...I think I know everything I need to know about this slob.

It is racist, colonialist, elitist and white-supremacist to question where Spence spends the money. She can use it as she sees fit.
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Some questions.

Here's the story:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/story/2013/01/07/pol-attawapiskat-audit-monday.html

The audit also noted "significant staff turnover" that had resulted in a "corporate memory loss" for transactions reported prior to 2010. Deloitte had difficulty tracing some of the earlier transactions because of changes in Attawapiskat's record-keeping systems.

According to Wiki, Spence became chief in August 2010.

It's also unclear to me from this document what the 'quarterly review meetings' were/are supposed to be and who the 'Advisor' mentioned in section 10.3.2 F c) is:

http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100019491/1100100019499

If the regional office is working with the co-manager quarterly - who was getting those reports and why were they being approved ?

This is a mess, no doubt, but the antidote to messes is clarity.

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Michael, corporate memory loss is a tongue-in-cheek term. You keep records and receipts of everything when you're dealing with corporate or public money so that staff turnover, which inevitably happens in any organization, doesn't erase the records of the past. The Attawapiskat reserve apparently didn't feel this was necessary, and there's literally zero excuse for that.

Canadians should rightly be outraged about this. Here we have this joke of a band indignantly protesting their hoooorrible treatment at the hands of Canadians and basically demanding more money from the government, yet they can't tell us where the money has been going so far, can't prepare or keep a budget and just tell us, "More money please. No questions please."

It's a freaking joke.

Edited by Moonbox
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Again, how do you know it's the band? How do you know if its criminals who have diverted the money from the community? If they were ripped, should the community take blame for it? Of course not.

There should be an investigation. Accountability has to exist on both sides. There is no excuse for the government not being aware of potential abuses in spending. That's what auditing is for. If they're not doing it, it's their fault.

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They didn't keep records. That's nobody's fault but the band and the chief. If proper records had been kept, any missing money would be the result of fraud, in which case you can go chasing after the perpetrators. With no records, anything could have happened. At the very best, the band is being run by some combination of incompetent, arrogant morons. At the very worse, we're looking at gross corruption and criminal intent. Regardless, Attawapiskat's credibility is now close to zilch.

Sure, the government could have audited the reserves more closely, but this is something that the First Nations protest regularly. They don't like the oversight. Unfortunately, it seems that's the way it has to be. They're clearly not capable/willing to keeping track of the money themselves.

Edited by Moonbox
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Without records, the people in charge of watching records should get fired first. Then they should be investigated, to see if they were involved in hiding money.

Sometimes its an inside job, somebody on the government side knew and was looking away. Probably for hush money.

Otherwise, why would they allow this amount of money to get spent without appropriate oversight? Those reports on spending, itemized purchases and so on, should have been submitted every month.

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Without records, the people in charge of watching records should get fired first.

Ottawa can only do and see as much as the band will give them, and realistically, they can't cut off funding. There was a reason they were under co management.

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The government wants to add more accountability to the FN and there is a backlash and protests it seems directed mainly at hiding the problem. It seems to me that the conservatives are incompetent when it comes to dealing with the media so if they had gone and done annual audits the media would have brought on a storm...

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Ottawa can only do and see as much as the band will give them, and realistically, they can't cut off funding. There was a reason they were under co management.

That sounds like an excuse, and a little passing of the buck.

In the first place, "Ottawa can only do and see as much as the band will give them." Really?

Poor, powerless Ottawa. They just have to keep giving our millions away, and they're not allowed to even ask for an audit... wouldn't want to offend anyone with the implication of impropriety.

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That sounds like an excuse, and a little passing of the buck.

In the first place, "Ottawa can only do and see as much as the band will give them." Really?

Really. There are obligations that must, under current law, be fulfilled, mismanagement or not...but like I said, there's a reason they were under co management.

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Those reports on spending, itemized purchases and so on, should have been submitted every month.

But they weren't.

Otherwise, why would they allow this amount of money to get spent without appropriate oversight?

Sorry Ms. Spence, we will no longer allow funding to your reserve until you produce the paperwork. somehow I don't think that would go over well...

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But they weren't.

Sorry Ms. Spence, we will no longer allow funding to your reserve until you produce the paperwork. somehow I don't think that would go over well...

Never said that should be the recourse. On the other hand, money doesnt get to the reserve, either way.

Instead we are obligated to keep giving money to criminals. Sorry, I dont find it acceptible.

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Never said that should be the recourse. On the other hand, money doesnt get to the reserve, either way.

Maybe not, but I can only imagine the repercussions.

Instead we are obligated to keep giving money to criminals. Sorry, I dont find it acceptible.

I don't find it any more acceptable than you. There is no easy solution, ultimately, I feel it's going to take compromise with toes on both sides getting stepped on.

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Without records, the people in charge of watching records should get fired first. Then they should be investigated, to see if they were involved in hiding money.

You don't know much about the real world, do you? This is pretty basic stuff bud. If you are getting money from the public purse, anyone with half a brain would know that a full accounting of money spent would be required. The Attawapiskat Band, the people getting the money, did not do that. Wherever that money went, it went where they decided it would go, but they felt it wasn't necessary or wouldn't look good to write down where it went.

smallc is trying to lead you to the logical conclusion here, but some connections seem to be loose on your end. The Attawapiskat band was warned numerous times to keep better records. They refused to do so. They ended up under third-party co-management because the government deemed they couldn't be trusted to spend the money wisely. The government appears to have been right. Now, after numerous warnings and imposed co-management, SURPRISE: They get audited and millions are missing. Hmmm... Where did the money go? The government has records that it went to the band. The band does not have records where they spent it.

Sometimes its an inside job, somebody on the government side knew and was looking away. Probably for hush money.

Otherwise, why would they allow this amount of money to get spent without appropriate oversight? Those reports on spending, itemized purchases and so on, should have been submitted every month.

Because the First Nations like to pretend they're independent. The indignity of having all of their records carefully scrutinized by the Canadian government just isn't fair or violates their Treaty rights or whatever else they feel like crying about. It's long been the M.O. for the government to send money to the reserves with few/no questions and then let them do their own thing. When they start fussing and protesting etc like Theresa Spence is doing, however, or when humanitarian crises get declared, the government HAS to start looking at where the money was spent.

This is going to start a domino effect. I'll bet further investigation into other reserves will find similar 'discrepencies' and the corruption and hypocrisy of the chiefs and their bands will be revealed.

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Sorry Ms. Spence, we will no longer allow funding to your reserve until you produce the paperwork. somehow I don't think that would go over well...

That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds. The feds could still transfer the funding to the letter of the treaties (which is a lot less than what they actually get), and just attach conditions for the extra money. They do that all the time for other communities. "Here's money for that project, just prove you're actually doing it (show us the tenders, and how much you're putting in)."

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smallc is trying to lead you to the logical conclusion here, but some connections seem to be loose on your end. The Attawapiskat band was warned numerous times to keep better records. They refused to do so. They ended up under third-party co-management because the government deemed they couldn't be trusted to spend the money wisely. The government appears to have been right. Now, after numerous warnings and imposed co-management, SURPRISE: They get audited and millions are missing. Hmmm... Where did the money go? The government has records that it went to the band. The band does not have records where they spent it.

That sums it up pretty well.

This is going to start a domino effect. I'll bet further investigation into other reserves will find similar 'discrepencies' and the corruption and hypocrisy of the chiefs and their bands will be revealed.

I really hope you're right, this is a problem that costs billions with little effect to many FN people. It would be great to see the government exposing the problem and start moving toward a solution for the benefit of all. I am not quite as optimistic however.

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That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds. The feds could still transfer the funding to the letter of the treaties (which is a lot less than what they actually get), and just attach conditions for the extra money. They do that all the time for other communities. "Here's money for that project, just prove you're actually doing it (show us the tenders, and how much you're putting in)."

You can't attach conditions though, as soon as you do your accused of colonialism and repressing FN people and branded a racist. I've even seen people throw around the word genocide recently...ridiculous. Native leaders are even saying that keeping records of spending goes against their ways as a people and is a form of control against them. They want their funding with no strings attached and no questions asked; anything less is unacceptable to them.

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