First Nations members in "strife'' over $8 million in trust fund
A bitter internal dispute over $8 million in a trust account — money paid out by Ottawa to settle a land claim — is dividing members of a First Nations band near Wawa, Ont.
A bitter internal
dispute over $8 million in a trust account — money paid out by Ottawa to
settle a land claim — is dividing members of a First Nations band near
Wawa, Ont.
Ottawa paid millions
to the Michipicoten First Nation in 2003, and that year the money was
put into a trust fund. The community has over 1,000 members and
according to their website the funds are intended to last more than 100
years, and provide long-term benefits for all band members, regardless
of where they live.
But according to a recent decision by Mr. Justice Michael Varpio,
of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, within two years of the
creation of the trust, relations between the band’s chief and council on
one side, and the trustees — many of whom live on the reserve —
“soured.”
In 2010, the chief and
band council tried to terminate the trust with a referendum, but they
failed to get enough votes, the judge noted.
The
court was asked to rule on an application by the chief and council that,
in effect, challenged the way in which the trustees managed some of the
funds in the trust account. The challenge is “merely a precursor’’ to a
larger application that will be brought forward to have the trust
“wound up’’ by the courts, the decision says.
Last year another
judge ordered that the trustees provide accounting details for the fund,
for the period from Jan. 1, 2008 to Dec. 31, 2010.
In issuing their
challenge of the trustees’ bookkeeping, the chief, Joseph Buckell, and
the band council didn’t allege fraud, this week’s decision says, nor are
they seeking that the trustees pay back the fund.
Chief Buckell declined to comment when contacted by the Star.
Benjamin Arkin, the lawyer for the trustees, and the trustees themselves are also not commenting on the case.
Buckell and the
council raised a number of objections to the trustees’ management of the
fund, including the trustees’ purchase of property on the reserve to
house the offices of the trust — the trust’s lease to use space in the
band office had been earlier terminated by the chief and council amid
the dispute.
But the Superior Court judge ruled the trustees “acted in good faith’’ in purchasing the property.
Ruling that there was
no expert evidence to indicate the accounts failed to comply with
appropriate standards, Varpio approved the trustees’ accounting records.
The judge also ordered
that $180,000 from the trust be paid to cover the trustees’ costs for
accounting, real estate, and lawyers’ fees required to fight the
application the chief and council brought forward.
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