Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Justin Bateman, British Columbia Director, Canadian Tax Payer Federation
PO Box 20539, Howe Street RPO, Vancouver, BC, V7Z 2N8
Re: Government of Canada and British Columbia Support for Dysfunctional Organization – MNBC
I write to you today in my role as the President of the BC Métis Federation. The BC Métis Federation is a provincial nonprofit board that has representation from across British Columbia. We write to the Canadian Tax Payer Federation to seek support and guidance from your association as both the Provincial and Federal Governments continue to invest millions each year into a nonprofit organization known as the Métis Nation British Columbia (MNBC), or rather the Métis Provincial Council of British Columbia. I will use the term MNBC for consistency in this correspondence.
Métis people, although Section 35 Aboriginal defined people, are taxpaying Canadians who expect governments to uphold their stated treasury policies and financial policies. Unfortunately despite such policies to protect tax payers (including our Métis people) both governments continue to support serious mismanagement by MNBC as a nonprofit that is not even in good standing as a corporate society (legal review attached for your confirmation). Federal and Provincial Governments invest about twelve million ($12,000,000.00) each year through a variety of projects or programs contracted to MNBC. Sadly despite our repeated requests over the year directly to MNBC or governments, there has been a complete lack of public accountability of how Métis public funding is being spent adding to MNBC incurring millions in new debt in only the last few years.
Initially the response by governments in 2011 was to fund an MNBC Debt Recovery Plan that has been posted on their website (www.mnbc.ca) since April 2011. This was fully funded and today has not been met in any way. Regardless governments ignored our repeated requests to take strong action and MNBC has further incurred more debt this last fiscal year. Today the Federal Government has remained silent while their departments such as Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, flow millions for programs and services that are not being fully invested and we believe redirected for other purposes. The Provincial Government response has been to suggest they are working closely with MNBC, meanwhile MNBC debt has increased by millions.
We are pursuing all potential options to remedy this situation, including legal review. The MNBC board has spent millions on themselves which was a major contributing factor to their financial situation. I have attached the following additional information for you to review for more background:
- Recent cover letter to the Prime Minister and Premier of BC June 22nd, 2012
- Bull Houser and Tupper Legal Opinion June 20th, 2012
- BC Métis Federation Financial Assessment March
We request an opportunity to meet and discuss these serious issues of public mismanagement of Métis resources. We believe MNBC should not even be eligible for contracts as they are not in good corporate standing and are essentially functionally bankrupt. Therefore the serious question many Métis people have is how was this enabled and perhaps governments are liable by their passive and supportive actions.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience to arrange a meeting. I can be contacted at 778-388-5013.
Thank you,
Keith Henry
President, British Columbia Métis Federation
Suite 300-3665 Kingsway
Vancouver, BC
V5R 5W2
[ilink url=”/wp-content/uploads/BC-Metis-Federation-Letter-to-CTF-June-26th-2012.pdf” style=”download”]Download the full letter in PDF format[/ilink]
