A little bit of …..education.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECi_7G0QAgw
By coincidence Russell Diabo and Dr Palmater were on TVO tonight.
This is a explanatory video of details many do not know. Those of you who wish to take the time to watch it are those who want to learn. Those of you who don’t….. that speaks for itself as well.
It’s an ‘indictment’ of bad bookkeeping valve. It’s not an indictment of any wrong doing!! But it is being made to look like something is ……….wrong! Because it works into Harper’s agenda and keeps his voting base happy.
As Plamater said, every audit in the past was approved by the Dept of Indian Affairs, including those before Spence took over.
So Spence and the Chief before her and other Chiefs in Canada in some cases….get a failing grade on bookkeeping. But……….to some people who are looking for anything and everything to condemn her and in association condemning all Natives …..this comes in handy. It’s like oh lets say hypothetically if someone started bloging on sites or posting on discussion boards anything they could find against Muslim people in order to discredit and attack them all.
I am always honest….despite what people may think or say….or the honesty bothers them….so I will be honest yet again. I personally don’t like Spence’s boyfriend or his part in all this. I’m not even sure if he is a status Native. If you want more blatant truth….if I was working a door at a bar and he walked in….I’d keep my eye on him.
Nonetheless, the main and most important part of all this is three fold:
a) Spence or the council as a whole are lousy bookkeepers from an ‘accountant’s” point of view. They’re not the first on Rez’s nor are they the first in any other area of business including books kept by many other citizens of other races in Canada.
b) There is No accusations of any kind that Spence or the council in any way shape of form did anything illegal or misleading.
c) The ‘timing’ of this is just tooooo coincidental and it all comes from the Harper’s desk.
I was just thinking back to many years ago when I first started in business. I did my own bookkeeping and I had taken a course in it and passed with flying colours. As a few years past and it got to be more and more I decided to hand it over to an accountant. (not the one I have now but a previous one). He went ballistic!!! I had to have this and that and why didn’t I have copies of this and that in different files and he didn’t like how I did my filing system etc etc etc etc. Then later I went to another accountant and he did it differently and then later I went to the accountant I have now and he does it totally different. What I learned is…..if you ask 10 accountants for their opinions….you’ll probably get 10 different answers.
Leaving aside the shabby bookeeping to me it's more about where/how the money was spent and why a good proportion of it had not been allocated to relieve the suffering of the common folk. That burden falls on Spence and her assistants that received outrageous salaries for managing a relatively small population albeit isolated
I don't see where a 'good proportion' of it has not been allocated. All I have read is that there are no back up documents for expeditures. I haven't read that any money is actually 'missing'....and any money in the account, don't forget on the Rez anything has to be approved by Indian Affairs before it can be spent.
As for Spence's salary, all the articles I have read it's about $69,579 (one said 70 grand). There isn't a person in Aboriginal Affairs who makes under 100,00 and the deputy minister makes 237 grand a year. Fontana makes about 150 grand a year. The mayor of Windsor gets 175 grand a year. Spence isn't getting free lunches at the Hunt Club or invited to the country club for a fish dinner and her city hall is two prefabs nailed together.
