Q&A
“...engaging in the economic mainstream doesn’t mean
giving up autonomy. It’s not one or the other—it’s both
concurrent. One supports the other.”
We spend about half our time working to
instil investor confidence, and participate in
many non-Aboriginal mainstream events
where we’re talking about the Board. The
other half of the time is spent explaining to
Aboriginal leaders that engaging in the economic mainstream doesn’t mean giving up
autonomy. It’s not one or the other—it’s both
concurrent. One supports the other.
You served two terms on the
Squamish Council. Has that
experience helped you fulfil your
current roles?
Harold: Absolutely. Understanding the politics
at a band level has helped me because ultimately it is at a band level that these [major
economic] decisions get made.
We’re 124 First Nations scheduled under
the First Nations Fiscal Management Act now.
Initially, a lot of the interest was in BC because many bands have property taxation
regimes, but we’re pleased to see that we
now have active clients in every province in
the country.
What’s your proudest personal
business accomplishment?
Harold: Getting legislative change to the
Indian Act on three different occasions [the
First Nations Land Management Act, the First
Nations Fiscal Management Act, and the First
Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act]. That empowered First Nations all
across Canada, on an optional basis, to become
engaged with the economic mainstream.
When you’re dealing with federal reserve
lands, you need to divorce yourself from the
Indian Act in certain areas on an optional basis,
and that’s what these pieces of legislation have
done.
How would you describe relations
between First Nations people
and non-natives when you were
growing up in BC?
Harold: The world was very different when I
grew up. You have to realize that Indians
didn’t get the right to vote until 1961. There
wasn’t this broadly held perspective in the
non-Aboriginal community that First Nations
had rights, that there were unresolved issues,
or that a time would come when all these
matters would have to be considered.
Can you describe the barriers to
economic self-reliance?
Harold: Part of the problem is that First
Nations were marginalized economically. They
were put in an environment where they became dependent on federal transfers. The fact
that they had land bases with huge resource
potential was never endorsed, because Indians
were considered wards of the federal government at that time. And so we were never encouraged [to be economically self-reliant].
There was never a relationship between
Canada and First Nations that encouraged
participation in the economic mainstream
at all. So we remained dependency-based.
Some of that started to change—certainly
education helped—in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s,
initially through bands assuming administration of programs. You started to see the
evolution of First Nations administrations.
But again, those were approaches that dealt
with program delivery responsibilities, not
resources or economic self-reliance.
What has changed more recently?
Harold: One thing that has really changed
over the past 25 years is the accounting profession. As an Indian band, we were told not
to record assets and liabilities, so it was just
revenue and expenditures.
Years ago, the Squamish Nation secured a
loan to put some social housing on reserve. I sat
down as the accountant and said, “Well if I
don’t record assets and liabilities, what is the
credit side to this transaction?” So I put it in
revenue. The auditors came in and they thought
I was a bit crazy, and afterwards came back
and said I was right. I thought: Wouldn’t the
private sector like to borrow money and record it as revenue on their balance sheet?!
So back then, even the accounting profession didn’t recognize that there was an order
of government that needed to be accounted
for. It was about 10 years ago that the CICA
[Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants]
undertook a study on First Nations financial
reporting that was spearheaded by Caroline
Davis, who was then an accountant and also an
assistant deputy minister with Indian Affairs.
Indian bands have responsibilities, they have
authorities, they administer—they are governments, and therefore they should be reporting
as governments.
It was at the same time that the Public Sector
Accounting Board was making all the changes
around how local governments should report.
So First Nations had to jump about 70 years
in financial reporting. Things like life cycle
costing—all of those kinds of issues—had
never had to be considered before. And then
that [the new higher standards] really made
evident the capacity gaps in First Nation
communities. It’s really what the goal of the
First Nations Financial Management Board is:
to assist First Nations in developing systemsbased approaches to managing their financial
affairs.
CPABC in Focus • Nov/Dec 2014 41