see also CBC story below ...

From Stratejuste.ca

Speaking of Accountability... Reexamining the Relationship of First Nation Voters to their Governments

Jodi Bruhn | December 15, 2012

In November, the House of Commons passed Bill C-27, an act requiring chiefs and councillors to publicly disclose - among other things - their incomes from salaries and other sources. Defending that bill before the House Committee, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development John Duncan justified its measures in the name of democracy. "Democracy," he stated, "depends on citizens being able to call their elected officials to account to ensure they represent their community's best interest."

The Minister's statement invites us to reflect on the nature of accountability in a representative democracy. At its heart are elections: specifically, their provision to voting citizens of a regular opportunity to remove representatives they find wanting.

Perhaps more than any other feature of democratic government, elections define the relationship between an incumbent government and its citizens. That relationship is simple yet exacting. Citizens, as voters, discipline governments at election time. And incumbent governments, facing the prospect of losing a critical mass of votes, must govern with that crucial day of reckoning in mind.

Evidence of the constraining influence of voters on incumbent governments is constant. Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver expounded the principle in late November, offering a first sign of his government's potential retreat from an earlier endorsement of the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal. "If we don't get people on side," he explained to a group of executives at the Canada Energy Summit, "we don't get the social licence - politics often follows opinion." Or consider his recent assurance that the Conservative government would take public opinion into account in reviewing foreign take-over bids for Canadian owned energy companies. "This is a democracy," he assured reporters: "the Government takes into account the opinions of Canadians."

The minister's statements may have prompted chagrin within a powerful sector in this country. But it also reminded who, ultimately, he and his Cabinet colleagues must please if they wish to retain power. To ignore the perceived wishes of a significant majority of voters is to flout the political equivalent of the law of gravity. And what sitting government would invite its own ruin?

But now let's return to the accountability of First Nation band councils to their citizens. Does the same tether that binds elected officials to citizens elsewhere in the country exist for First Nation people? Posed at the community level, it turns out it does. First Nation citizens can remove their chiefs and councils, either through elections conducted under the Indian Act or through their own custom election codes.

But what about that other government whose laws, policies, programs and practices bear so much on the lives of First Nation citizens - the "senior government," as Minister Duncan recently referred to the federal government when defending Bill C-27. Can First Nation voters hold their federal representatives to account at the ballot box?

Here, democratic accountability falters. Voting as a bloc, First Nation voters might decide a given federal constituency. But their comparatively small numbers ensure that they could never oust a sitting government at the federal level, no matter how dissatisfied. The defining relationship of a democracy simply does not hold between First Nation voters and the federal government. It didn't at Confederation, when they had no vote. It didn't when they gained the vote in 1962; and, as an effect of simple math, it still doesn't today.

Some might state that this is simply how it goes. Minority groups will always need to resort to means beyond the electoral system to sway their governments. Certainly, First Nation people have used the gamut, largely through their regional and national advocacy organizations: international appeals to the Queen or the United Nations, outreach to the broader voting public, impassioned appearances before parliamentary committees, law suits, protests, blockades - and now, ominously, a hunger strike. The most potent levers in recent years have been successful assertions of Aboriginal and treaty rights following the Supreme Court's articulation of a Crown duty to consult on major resource projects.

These alternatives have proven effective at times and some hold promise for the future. Yet they should not obscure the stubborn reality that the defining democratic means to hold an incumbent federal government to account is unavailable to First Nation voters. This reality, further, has a disproportionate impact on life in reserve communites. On reserves, the federal government does what provincial governments do elsewhere, but with a lot more discretionary power. Band councils may be responsible to administer federal services ranging from infrastructure to education, but the federal government retains the jurisdiction, program authorities and power over funding - including over how much, how and when it flows. And all this as only one of its many national priorities and portfolios.
When Parliament returns from Christmas break, the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples will study Bill C-27. Whatever its merits or defects, the First Nations Financial Transparency Act does not begin to address this larger structural issue that is a key inhibitor to accountability on First Nation reserves. Nor, for that matter, would a fully modernized Indian Act address it - or any other act leaving authority over key decisions with a federal minister. Regardless of which party holds power at the federal level, the lack of federal accountability to First Nation voters remains a key impediment to the accountable governance of their communities.

So what's the strategy to ensure that elected officials represent the best interest of First Nation communities? In a reformed scenario, a basic requirement would seem to be this: that officials with ultimate authority for key decisions affecting First Nation communities account to the constituents who bear the impacts of their decisions, rather than solely to the majority who do not.

Seen through an accountability lens, developing First Nation governments that answer directly to their constituents at a regional - perhaps even national - level remains as pressing an institutional need as ever.

Jodi Bruhn (PhD, Notre Dame) is a published policy researcher, author and facilitator specializing in governance and Aboriginal/Crown relations. She is vice-president of Stratéjuste.

From CBC.ca

Liberal senators walk out on Aboriginal Affairs minister

John Duncan defends bill proposing more financial transparency in First Nations communities

By Susan Lunn-Feb 6, 2013

  Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan defended the controversial proposed First Nations Financial Transparency Act before the Senate committee on Aboriginal Peoples on Wednesday evening.

Three Liberal senators, all of them aboriginal, walked out of a committee meeting Wednesday night, as Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan was testifying about the need for his government's proposed First Nations Accountability Act.

The act would force all First Nations to post their annual financial statements online, along with the salaries of the chief and council members.

Wednesday evening was the first time the Senate's aboriginal committee met to review the legislation.

Two of the Liberal senators told the committee they supported the principle behind the legislation.

"I live in [a] First Nation and if I go ask for information I can't get anything," said Sandra Nicholas, who represents New Brunswick.

Fellow Liberal Senator Nick Sibbeston from the Northwest Territories told Duncan his problem wasn't with the bill, but with the process. He asked the minister why there wasn't more consultation with First Nations communities, especially after the recent Idle No More protests.

"I ask you as an aboriginal person on behalf of all the aboriginal people in our country who say there is need for consultation, whether you would consider pulling the bill," he said.

But Duncan replied that the legislation was tabled in 2011 and if there is a delay now, it could be more than two years before it is implemented.

"You know there are some people entrenched contrary to the bill. But the public call for accountability, and the membership call for accountability, is something as a government I don't think we can ignore," Duncan told the committee.

A few minutes later, Sibbeston told the committee that he, Nicholas, and Senator Lillian Dyck from Saskatchewan were leaving the meeting.

"It's our small way of showing discontent I guess with the fact that nothing seems to have changed and also to show our support for the First Nations in our country that at least somebody in Ottawa has heard them," Sibbeston said as he was leaving.

First Nations find measures 'heavy-handed'

The committee will continue to hear from more witnesses in the weeks ahead.

The bill does not have the unanimous support of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).

While there is general consensus for the need for chiefs and councillors to be more transparent and accountable, there is disagreement over how that should be done.

For example, some First Nations do not have internet access, making it difficult to post information online.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, a B.C. regional AFN chief, said before a parliamentary committee last year, "Chiefs were clear in their assertion that the proposed measures are both heavy-handed and unnecessary and they suggest that First Nation governments are corrupt, our leaders are not transparent and consequently need to be regulated by Ottawa.

"What we really need to do is increase the options for our [First Nations] to develop their own governance including their accountability frameworks, so they can build their own future within Canada rather than be legislated from above," she added.

No date yet for next AFN-PM meeting

Duncan told CBC News that he met with Shawn Atleo, the national chief for the Assembly of First Nations, on Tuesday for the first time since Atleo returned to work after a brief sick leave.

Duncan said no date has been set for a followup meeting between the prime minister and Atleo.

The high level working group of senior AFN chiefs, privy council officials and representatives from the Prime Minister's Office met on Wednesday and are set to meet again next Monday to attempt to address most of the eight priorities put forward by the chiefs in January.

Duncan confirmed the focus of the group's work is comprehensive land claims and treaty implementation.

On Tuesday evening, the majority of the Conservative caucus joined the NDP in support of a motion in the House of Commons that called on the Harper government to "make the improvement of economic outcomes of First Nations, Inuit and Métis a central focus of Budget 2013."

The motion also called on the government to "commit to action on treaty implementation and full and meaningful consultation on legislation that affects the rights of aboriginal Canadians, as required by domestic and international law."

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