Khareema,
You wrote:
. "It would be of little surprise to me to see the whole previous set of problems be swept under the rug, and a bunch more funding be allocated. just watch. She is very experienced at this game."
Khareema, my opinion is ...it's a bit too late for sweeping stuff under the rug. The tone of social media has changed. When Spence first started her hunger scam ..and you looked at the comments under the news articles from various people commenting..the tone was...the big bad government .and poor spence. Someone even compared her to the like of Jesus Christ in her wonderfulness.
Now ...read the comments from folks on the recent Spence articles. Tax Payers are damned angry ..and for good reason. They want answers to how did this happen? Where is the money going? Are there other chiefs out there running their reserves like Spence.
The cat is out of the bag.
This is not going to go away. The internet has made information very accessible to ALL.
If you are broke and don't own a computer or have internet.... you can walk to your nearest library.
Do you really think that Spence is the only Chief with Shoddy reporting?
As an example....lets look at the City of Mississauga.
www.mississauga.ca
Let's see how this city is being run.
http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/cityhall/budget
http://www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/CorpReport_2011ExpensesMC.pdf
http://www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/2011ExpenditureStatement_Dec31.pdf
I'm able to see budgets, and details that are fine tuned like a piano. I can who works in council and on the board, how much they made, their car alllowance, their mileage....I can see details like $22.00 spent on an ipad cover for pete's sake. Accountability for $22.00!!! Even an amount like donation of candy canes for $149.00 is accounted for.
We've already seen the horrid state of financial reporting at www.attawapiskat.org
But, how about the rest of the bands...let's pick another one to peek at.
How about Matawa's Financial report for 2011?
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=matawa%27s+financial+statements&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.matawa.on.ca%2Fupload%2Fdocuments%2Fmatawa_agr_2011_web.pdf&ei=7xfuUMuvFrK40AHIuICABQ&usg=AFQjCNGCb3x9I9tEJ6VcvVByfBsn17NhwQ&bvm=bv.1357700187,bs.1,d.dmQ
Youll see a 66 page document. Start reading from page 52 and up.
How is this for detail as compared to city of Mississauga.
Resource Materials:$199K no detailed breakdown
Meetings: 305K no detailed breakdown
Board and Chief meetings: $331K no detailed breakdown (see the other meeting figure above...for what exactly???over 1/2 million for...meetings??
Travel: 290K no detailed breakdown
Professional development training:$327K no detailed breakdown
Salaries OVER 2.4 MILLION (no clue who gets paid what ..no detail seen)
consultants: $554K! no details no names nothing.
professional fees:$273K no details
repairs and maintenance : $ 84K no details (small amount compared to meetings!!!!)
Guy's. like Ezra will have a field day for quite some time. One by One they will be scrutinized. City of Mississauga accounts for a $22.00 ipad cover and for Mattawa we see something like Consultants $554K, with no names or breakdowns. There's 2 meetings listed. Meetings and Board and Chief meetings both huge amounts with NO details.
There is a feeling with the First Nations that the solution is ...a resource sharing plan.
Share the resource pie and all with be well. Right? So we go from a gov't cheque to a resource dividend???This will make everything better and just?? NO way.
Transparency and ACCOUNTABILITY must come before any change is possible.
