(March 7, 2025) At last weekend’s Métis Nation Governing Assembly (MNGA), Métis Nation British Columbia (MNBC) failed to comply with Article 10 of the MNGA Act which requires the inclusion of a Treasurer’s report at the Spring MNGA. This is the one and only report that the Treasurer is responsible for to be included in the various reports given to the MNGA, but it was nowhere to be seen.
Did the Treasurer Patrick Harriott, who gets paid extra money for his role, stand up and apologize for the missing report? No. It was left to the Speaker of the MNGA to indicate that it was not able to be finalized in time and that it would be ready for the MNGA in late May. Really? MNBC has somewhere between 300 and 400 staff running around their operations but yet the Treasurer and the staff in finance couldn’t finalize the Treasurer’s Report in time for this MNGA where it was supposed to be included along with other reports.
MNBC claims to be a government but yet they can’t even comply with their own legislation. What would happen if a real government – like a municipal government or the provincial government failed to post a treasurer’s report that their bylaws or legislation required to be posted at a certain time? Heads would probably roll – starting with the politician responsible.
So why is the treasurer’s report so important? Because MNBC pulls in at least $70 million a year in public funding, and the MNGA – and by extension MNBC Citizens have the legal right through the MNGA in March each year to expect a treasurer’s report to know what the state of finances look like. In real government it is called accountability by the finance minister.
The same MNBC treasurer this week then criticized the provincial government for not giving MNBC the $25.8 million that they asked for in the budget. Maybe the MNBC Treasurer missed the memo but back in January the Premier directed every one of his Cabinet Ministers to find savings and efficiencies to trim costs. The message was on the wall – they needed to save money. Given the lack of success by the MNBC Treasurer and his colleagues in lobbying for more money, instead of giving themselves a pay increase and hiring more staff, maybe they should be re-evaluating their priorities, trimming their costs, including their salaries and travel, and re-allocating a portion of the tens of millions of dollars they get from the feds to more critical programs. But wait - we don’t know the state of their funding because there was no Treasurer’s report.
BC Métis Leader Clara Morin DalCol says, “When I was the President of MNBC, we provided a Treasurer’s report to each and every March MNGA. Not only was it required by the MNGA Act, but MNBC Citizens had every right to know about the state of our finances. It is called accountability. Where’s the accountability now?”
What can we do about this ?