What's The Point?

"These board members have the power to change things, the power to reveal what was going on at the IDLP.  How much money has gone into the IDLP without anybody knowing where it is being spent, or where it's going - or whether it is even benefitting the community or jut benefitting a select few?


"The truth needs to come out.  Transparency is the main issue right now, and accountability, too.  It's fine to be transparent, but if you're not held accountable - what's the point?"

Fair enough question.  What is the point?  If there's little trust and little reason to have trust in representatives whom the community has given authority to, then that authority should be revoked and trust placed elsewhere.   Inuit leaders in Sheshatshiu, Newfoundland are rewarding themselves handsomely, but they don't appear to feel that they need to be accountable to those whom they represent.

This is a hoary old story seen replicated elsewhere on First Nations reserves, time and again.  Now the Innu Nation board is finding itself nonplussed and rather put off by those purporting to work on their behalf.

A Labrador village with a private Innu-owned enterprise whose purpose is to broker deals with non-aboriginal companies wanting to do business on Innu lands, create jobs, provide education and opportunity for members of the Mushuau and Sheshatshiu First Nations has suddenly had the spotlight lighting up employees' salaries.

Someone has seen fit to leak information on employee salaries, information that has formerly been screened from scrutiny.  A former band chief and ex-chief executive officer paid $658,847 in 2011, and over $1-million in the last two years as head of the IDLP.  As compared to past years when the CEO drew a salary of around $100,000.

"Nobody should be making $650,000.  Not when you have so many people in the community unemployed and an overall lack of programs and social services to help the people.  All of that's completely being ignored.  Our kids are being born and taken into foster care - because we have alcoholism, high rates of drug use and a lack of jobs.  We have some serious problems here."

"Leaders misleading our people", read one placard placed over the IDLP office building's facade.  "How long has this been going on", read another poster.  There is a growing demand to have the RCMP look into the matter.  To have the IDLP open its books to a transparent investigation into its activities.  After all, the enterprise was started and is owned by the community.

To benefit the community at large.  Not to pull in a princely, and largely unearned salary for a chief executive officer who has been busy shielding himself from the public view.  Paul Rich, the man in question is incommunicado.  He has nothing to say to clear up any ambiguities that might prevail.  Anything to explain, for example, why he should be categorized as a millionaire while the very people he represents are suffering and living in squalor.

A village with a population of 1,054 paying out a rich salary to one of their own to oversee projects that have the potential to brighten futures for all of them.  What the community does have is a memory of an earlier leaked document that caused a similar scandal.  When a letter on Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation letterhead authorized by Chief Sebastien Bennuen requested funds from the band's corporate trust administrators at the Bank of Montreal.

A "...payout - in the amount of $20,000 each" was to be administered on behalf of two unnamed members of the community for unspecified "services".  Along with an additional "$50,000 representing administration fees in compensation to the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation for costs incurred with the pay-outs" - oh, and another "$90,000 representing administration fees".

Subsequently, a petition was circulated for the purpose of having Chief Benuen step down from his position of trust.  The petition was unsuccessful in its stated purpose.  He continues to sit on the IDLP four-member board.  In a fit of pique the chief's wife vandalized the local radio station.  A state of major dysfunction that no one can possibly deny.