Aboriginal Affairs reviewing planning commission's books
'Want to come and have a look? Knock your socks off': board chairperson
Stewart Burnett and Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Monday, July 20, 2015
IQALUIT
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada will be reviewing the Nunavut Planning Commission's finances, but chairperson Hunter Tootoo isn't worried about it.
"We've got nothing to hide," said Tootoo.
A July 14 letter from Anne Scotton, AANDC's chief audit and evaluation executive, informed the NPC that AANDC would be conducting a financial review.
"The objective of this work is to provide an independent and objective opinion that AANDC funding allocated to the Nunavut Planning Commission has been expended in accordance with the terms and conditions of our funding agreement," stated Scotton in the letter.
Tootoo said that, as a prerequisite for signing the contribution agreement, the NPC gives AANDC a work plan every year which identifies what work will be done with the money AANDC is providing, along with a budget. AANDC has to approve the plan before giving NPC funding.
"We also give them every year our audited financial statements, which are all online and have all been clean audits," said Tootoo.
Last year's financial statements will be online once the board approves them, but Tootoo said it's another clean audit.
"Want to come and have a look? Knock your socks off, man," said Tootoo. "We've got clean audits and I'm not worried about that. If that's what it's going to take for them to come in and do it and get it out of their system, go ahead."
AANDC will be using KPMG, an accounting firm, to conduct the financial review, which should be completed this summer.
Scotton stated that the results of the review may be posted on the AANDC website.
Tootoo said he denied a request to do an external review of the planning commission when he first became chairperson of the NPC board.
"I was asked by someone in the minister's office to get an external review done," said Tootoo. "I said well, I've looked at everything. I don't think it's necessary. The little funding that we do have I'd rather use it for something else. I don't want waste money on that if I don't think it's necessary, so I didn't do it."
Announcement of the financial review came shortly after Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt granted an exemption from the North Baffin Regional Land Use Plan for a Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. application, contrary to a Nunavut Planning Commission decision, and gave it to the Nunavut Impact Review Board for an environmental review instead. Premier Peter Taptuna encouraged that move and suggested an audit of NPC in a May 8 letter to Valcourt.
