Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 05/99) - One of the government ministers facing heat in the legislature of late has been Stephen Kakfwi -- over his handling of the NWT Development Corporation.

And some of the attacks have appeared to be at least as personal as political.

The Sahtu MLA announced in the assembly that the corporation and its subsidiaries will undergo an operational audit in response to concerns raised by the auditor general's office.

"Following concerns by the auditor general, the Financial Management Board in February directed that I undertake an operational audit of the Development Corporation," he said.

Answering questions from Yellowknife South MLA Seamus Henry on Thursday as to whether the corporation had exceeded board guidelines in distributing funds, Kakfwi said parties had long been voicing their concerns over corporation guidelines.

"We have been unable to provide the information that the auditor general has been asking for, for a number of years now," he told Henry.

The whys and the hows of this lapse in the corporation's accountability remain cloudy, and Kakfwi was unable to shed much light on the issue during the sessions -- though he said that because of territorial division and the closure of the retail outlets run by corporation subsidiary Arctic Trading Company Ltd., the corporation's scope of operations had changed dramatically.

Kakfwi also announced, however, that with three new appointments, there is now total of eight members on the corporation board, "in full compliance with the (corporation's) act" -- a situation he conceded hasn't existed for several years.

Yellowknife North MLA Roy Erasmus wasn't content to let the matter drop. He said Friday that in reviewing legislative transcripts, he'd compiled a list of reasons Kakfwi had given for not having previously had a full complement of board members -- including laying the blame on territorial division, staff, the MLAs and cabinet.

"Who's next on the list?" Erasmus said, adding sharply, "Has it ever occurred to the minister, as it has to others, that if he hadn't been doing such a bad job he wouldn't have been directed to do an operational audit?"

Comments by Erasmus and the other MLAs -- including former premier Don Morin's talk of pork-barrelling -- kept Kakfwi in the spotlight all last week.