Just two days before the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations election, the Tribal Chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council is claiming that the federation is doing a poor job of disclosing its financial activity with its members.
In March, Ottawa decided to conduct a forensic audit on the FSIN’s records from 2019 through 2024 after allegations of misused public funds. Now, Mark Arcand is suggesting something similar after having read the first 153 available pages of the audit report.
Arcand sits on the FSIN Treasury Board. He says a shorter version of the audit report was compiled, shared, and ultimately passed by FSIN chiefs in assembly, but he claims it did not contain key financial details, and may not have been passed if it had.
Using an Access to Information and Privacy request, he was able to get his hands on the full report, which revealed a $3.6 million in non-staff travel expenses, $14 million in deferred revenue, a $6 million deficit in 2022-2023, and $11.4 million in consultant fees.
“That’s a million dollars a month, roughly, in a 12-month calendar. That’s a lot of money, and we don’t have transparency of who those individuals are to our chiefs,” he explains. “These are large numbers out of a $50 million organization…If you do the math, $14 million out of $50 million, that’s 28 per cent of funding that’s not reaching the grassroots people.”
Arcand adds that he is considered non-staff, so he should be directly impacted by the $3.6 million in non-staff travel expenses, but “if you divide that number by chiefs that are non-staff, that is a large amount of money. I know our chiefs have not received the thirty-some thousand dollars out of that money for non-staff travel, so who does that got to?”
With bringing these details to light, he says his goal is to make grassroots organizations aware of how money that was supposed to be allocated to them is being spent.
Alongside Arcand was Kirby Constant, Chief of James Smith Cree Nation. He says during the pandemic, he found $5.5 million worth of expired Personal Protective Equipment in a building on the Cree Nation.
Through investigation, Constant claims that in December of 2020, FSIN was granted $6.5 million from Indigenous Services Canada to pay for the PPE, one million more dollars than what was spent.
“So, FSIN transferred out $5.5 million, and kept $1 million in their organization. Come after election, I hope we can get some answers to why that happened, when it was clearly told to be numerous times that FSIN only received $5.5 million (from ISC).”
He is still investigating as to how and when the PPE was delivered, as well as why its delivery was missed.
Arcand concluded by saying he is not accusing anybody of anything, he is only calling for improved governance from the FSIN, and he hopes whoever ends up becoming Chief will operate with accountability and transparency in mind moving forward.
The incumbent in the FSIN elections which take place this week is Bobby Cameron. He is being challenged by Aly Bear.
