The New Westminster Indian Band is among more than 50 First Nations groups that have yet to comply with new transparency rules requiring them to post financial statements online for the last fiscal year.
But Chief Rhonda Larrabee isn’t intentionally avoiding complying with the First Nation Financial Transparency Act. Rather she is struggling with how to pay for the approximately $6,000 it will cost for an auditor.
“I was just concerned about the cost, that’s all I was concerned about,” said Larrabee, who runs her small 14-member band, which has no land base, on less than $24,000 a year.
“I have called the auditor, and even the auditor said it seems a waste of money to do an audit for you,” Larrabee told The Record.
The act, passed by the Harper government, seeks to force First Nations across the country to disclose their financial information and the salaries of band politicians, states a report from the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
Larrabee said she doesn’t draw a salary from federal funds, but she uses money she receives to run her band out of her home office. Three years ago, Larrabee had to have an audit done and said it cost the band $14,000. She didn’t want to dish out thousands more to comply with the new rules, she said.
“So, I just didn’t want to have to spend that money out of my own pocket again,” Larrabee explained.
But Aboriginal Affairs has no intention of letting her off the hook, though she said she was told the agency would help foot the bill for the most recent audit.
Larrabee has a fascinating story of her aboriginal heritage. Growing up, she believed she was of Chinese-Canadian descent. Her mother, who was born to the New Westminster Indian Band, looked like she was of Asian descent and lived in Chinatown, where she assimilated into the culture.
Larrabee didn’t discover her aboriginal ancestry until she was 24 and began looking into her family tree.
After her mother passed away, Larrabee and her siblings formed the New Westminster Indian Band.
The band filed a land claim in 2012 for areas of the Kruger paper site, Pauper Island and an area across the Fraser River in Surrey. The decision on their claim is expected in October 2015.
Unlike some other First Nations, which take issue with the federal government’s mandate to file the audited statements, including the call to reveal funds earned through businesses, Larrabee isn’t concerned about providing the information.
Asked where she stands on their decision, Larrabee said: “Some of them have a lot of economic development that they don’t want posted. People say that I’m kind of a politician, but I’m not. I feel like I’m just an ambassador for our First Nation, so really I don’t know. I don’t know if I had economic development if I would want people to know.”
