(February 1, 2026) The minutes of three MNBC Board meetings, including a “special Board meeting” in early January have finally been posted, and they reveal some strange happenings.
First of all, their Chief Executive Officer Colette Trudeau was missing from all three Board meetings. The CEO is a standard attendee at every Board meeting, but not at the Board meetings in November and December, nor the special meeting in January and in a rather unusual move at the January meeting, the Chief Financial Officer attended as the acting CEO. Also, almost all senior staff who often attend the Board meetings were missing. So what is going on at the senior staff level? Earlier in January we learned that some possible senior staff changes, temporary or otherwise, were happening at MNBC.
The meeting minutes from December 15th indicate that it had to have been quite a meeting. That’s the meeting when the MNBC Board voted to reinstate President Walter Mineault after he had been suspended in August last year by the Executive Committee. In voting to reinstate Mineault, the Board in effect overruled the members of the Executive Committee. After the reinstatement, two members of the Executive Committee – Treasurer Patrick Harriott and Secretary Deb Fisher - resigned their Executive positions and were replaced by Board Directors Louie DeJaeger and Paulette Flamond
According to the Board minutes for the same December 15th meeting, the Board also terminated the legal services being provided by a lawyer who had been retained back in August by the Executive Committee regarding the Mineault suspension, and then the Board hired a new lawyer from a different law firm. The new lawyer then spent nearly 5 hours meeting in-camera with the Board at the special Board meeting on January 6th.
And the strange happenings continued - next up at a hastily-called Special Métis Nation Governing Assembly (MNGA) in the evening of January 26th, a resolution was passed by Board members and Community representatives to have the previously scheduled MNGA for February 28 and March 1 be held as an in-person meeting rather than the originally planned virtual meeting. One of the reasons given was “In order to protect the confidentiality of a report by an independent investigator, it is advisable that the MNGA consider the report in person rather than virtually”. This would seem to suggest that there is a strong possibility that the in-person MNGA at the end of February will be held in-camera blocking any ability of MNBC citizens to know what is in the report about why Mineault was suspended on August 18th.
If MNBC citizens are prevented from seeing the investigator’s report that will be a complete reversal from when former MNBC President Clara Morin DalCol was removed in a coup by a majority of Board members back in January 2021 (most of whom are still on this Board). Back then there was no hesitation in posting a confidential report on the trumped up allegations against her.
Ms. Morin DalCol says, “The investigator’s report needs to be made public because every MNBC citizen has a right to know what complaints were made about Mineault, and the findings of the independent investigator. If it was okay to post the “confidential” report on me back in 2021, why is it not okay to post the report on Mineault?
She says, “Citizens should be contacting their Community Presidents demanding that the MNGA on February 28 and March 1 be open through livestreaming because Mineault and this Board work for the citizens – it is not the other way around and as a result citizens have every right to know what is in that report about the MNBC President.”
As President of Red River Métis British Columbia, Ms. Morin DalCol invites true Métis in this province who are tired of the MNBC antics to join a real grassroots organization which is focused on improving the lives of our true Métis people in British Columbia. Red River Métis British Columbia works on the issues that matter most to our members through strong and effective advocacy work with the federal and provincial governments.
Join Red River Métis - British Columbia today, by clicking on
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