Message From the Chief's Desk - February 22, 2024

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It has been a while since I’ve done a video address to the community. We will make an effort to produce a video update on at least a monthly basis going forward. This will be part of a key commitment to ensuring reliable information for our members.

I understand there has been much concern surrounding the finalizing and sharing of Sagamok Anishnawbek’s financial statements.  We have experienced a number of delays in receiving complete and final audited statements for 2022-23 from our auditors.

As we’ve been advised from KPMG, several items contributed to the delay, including additional audit standards required, enhanced requirements due to Sagamok’s purchase of OCL Crushing and Aggregates, and some resulting staffing capacity challenges at KPMG to maintain the service levels they had previously been able to provide us.  We have taken steps to address the challenges we’ve had with service delivery standards from KPMG, by undertaking a request for proposal process and, as an outcome, the appointment of a new auditor (BDO Canada LLP) for fiscal 2023/24.  We trust this will assist us in maintaining the standards that we have set for ensuring timely and transparent financial information sharing with our community.  While KPMG was not able to meet our November request for AGA, we WILL host an annual general assembly on March 27th at 5PM to share, in-person, the financial statements and highlight of departmental priorities and outcomes from the past year. The fact is that we, again, have a clean audit and are in a healthy financial position. We have shared the final statements received from KPMG, on our members portal, as well as a copy of our annual report.

We are grateful to those who have continued to join us in person and online at the many community engagements we’ve had over the past year.  Our next scheduled RHT engagement is February 25th for those who could not attend on either December 20th in Sagamok, or the Jan 15, 16, 19, or 21st in Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Ottawa, and Toronto urban visits.  We are also planning a number of community engagement sessions for the upcoming year and we hope you will continue to share and participate in those important conversations.  We have much work to do in the coming years and we trust that our recent call out for community members to participate in committees will continue to ensure the needs and voices of our members helps to continue guiding the work of Administration and Council.

As part of our financial administration law, Sagamok Anishnawbek ensures annual workplan and budgeting exercises are undertaken in collaboration with each department. Administration and Chief and Council follow these plans throughout the year and spending takes place within the approved budgets for those plans.

With that, we are happy to announce that we have scheduled our Council livestreaming to begin in March.  We have tested our  livestreaming equipment and tools  during  our community engagements, and while we haven’t been able to address all of the sound quality issues, we don’t want that to continue to delay this important communication tool we’ve previously committed to implementing. We want to ensure we share information with all our members  on the business of Sagamok Council and Administration. We hope that you will be patient with our communications team while we work out any issues we may encounter to ensure a smooth audio visual experience.  

Before closing, I just want to reiterate the importance of ensuring reliable sources for information sharing. We know that there are still many types of misinformation, fraudulent outreach, and all sorts of creative methods being employed to mislead or take advantage of our community members.  We encourage you to register on the members only portal, if you haven’t already. We hope that our efforts to increase in person engagements, livestreaming, providing website updates, members portal and electronic signage have assisted to create reliable information sharing, and remind you to be mindful of the ways in which misinformation is shared. We want to ensure our community is protected from those who may not have the best intentions, especially as we get closer to the reality of settlement funds flowing to our members.

With that, I say chi-miigwech…

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