'No matter how fast you run, the mistakes of the past will eventually catch up to you'

The Government of Nunavut filled out the Nunavut Business Credit Corp.'s depleted board last week with four high-ranking GN bureaucrats, allowing the corporation to resume lending under tight government control.

It's the latest damage control move provoked by the highly-embarrassing report on the NBCC that the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, issued Nov. 5.

In an earlier announcement, David Simailak, the finance and economic development minister, said the GN has asked the RCMP to probe the NBCC's financial records.

Fraser, who found the NBCC's books were so messed up she couldn't form an opinion on them, said the corporation's previous board did not do enough to protect the public interest.

She also recommended the GN study the idea of eliminating the corporation as a stand-alone entity and running it from within a larger organization.

The four new board members, each of whom will serve a one-year term, are:

• Peter Ma, the deputy minister of finance – Ma will also serve as "designated interim chairperson;"
• David Omilgoitok, the deputy minister of executive and intergovernmental affairs and the most powerful non-elected official at the GN;
• Aluki Rojas, the deputy minister of human re­sources;
• Markus Weber, the deputy minister of justice.

Ironically, the four bureaucrats are all members of an internal GN watchdog group called the "Crown Agency Council." Since its creation in 2003, that council was supposed to keep an eye on the GN's ailing Crown corporations.

The GN set it up in September of 2003 after the auditor general found numerous shortcomings in the financial management of agencies like the NBCC, Nunavut Power Corp. and Nunavut Development Corp.

Simailak's appointment of the four bureaucrats follows the sudden resignations last week of three board members who served during the period covered by the auditor general's report: ex-chair Bob Hanson, ex-vice chair Ruth Niptanatiak Wilcox, and ex-board member Ike Haulli of Igloolik.

Three recently-appointed people – Alex Buchan of Cambridge Bay, Lorne Kusugak of Rankin Inlet, and Tommy Owlijoot of Arviat – will continue to sit on the board.

This brings the number of NBCC board members up to seven, the minimum required by law, and it means the NBCC may start lending money again, an activity that Simailak froze earlier that week.

As for the corporation's full-time staff, Simailak told MLAs last week that the GN has replaced all of them, including ex-CEO Mel Orecklin, who departed the NBCC by December of 2006, after the auditor general's staff were well into their work.

By then, they had already turned up serious problems, including missing documents and the erasure of electronic data.

Responding to questions from Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo, Simailak told MLAs Nov. 6 that the GN sent the ex-CEO a "written warning" in December of 2005 after the NBCC failed to submit a required report.

In April of 2006, the GN sent a letter "reprimanding the CEO" after another report found "numerous problems with the loan files and administrative systems," Sim­ailak said.

Finally, on Nov. 25, 2006, when the auditor general's staff discovered that "key documents were missing," the ex-CEO was given six weeks to shape up or face possible dismissal.

"The deputy minister, again, wrote to the CEO to say that if his performance is not dramatically improved within the next six weeks, additional action may be taken, including dismissal," Simailak told MLAs.

Within weeks of getting that letter, Orecklin had departed the NBCC. Since then Steve Hannah, an acting CEO, has filled in for him. The rest of the corporation's five-member staff has also been replaced.

Meanwhile, Chris Lalande, Simailak's long-serving executive assistant, was dismissed from his job last week, but Simailak wouldn't say what role Lalande may have played in the NBCC fiasco.

John Lamb, the director of the GN's devolution office, will replace Lalande.

In spite of all these efforts, Simailak and Premier Paul Okalik continued to fend off questions raised by irate MLAs as the legislative assembly's fall sitting drew to a close last week.

Most of their questions are aimed at the credibility of GN cabinet ministers – especially their assertion that they didn't know how bad the situation was until recent weeks.

"I believe that it is fair to say that no matter how fast you run, the mistakes of the past will eventually catch up to you," Tootoo said in a member's statement summing up his view of the GN's performance since the last election.