Former Baffin Fisheries CEO due back in court next month
Garth Reid scheduled to enter a plea on fraud charges in Newfoundland and Labrador court June 2
Baffin Fisheries’ FV Sivulliq pulls into the harbour at Nuuk, Greenland in July 2020. (Photo courtesy of Baffin Fisheries)
The former CEO of Baffin Fisheries is set to enter a plea on criminal charges of defrauding the company in a Newfoundland and Labrador provincial court next month.
Garth Reid was charged with defrauding the Inuit-owned company earlier this year.
He faces charges of fraud over $5,000 and criminal breach of trust, linked to a period between October 2016 and April 2017, when Reid still served as CEO of the company.
Baffin Fisheries is owned by five Inuit hunters and trappers associations in the Baffin region of Nunavut.
Those groups jointly filed a civil lawsuit in 2017 alleging Reid and his wife unlawfully spent the company’s funds for their personal use, namely the construction of a “lavish mansion and guest house” in Winterton, on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled that Reid must pay back $544,049, plus interest and legal costs, to the company.
Reid, 51, made his first appearance in St. John’s provincial court on April 28.
Crown prosecutor Erin Matthews said Reid is scheduled back in court on June 2.
Maybe Inuit Owned Companies should really think twice before letting a southerner be their CEO. Kind of ironic that all these Inuit Companies want to be run by southerners when there are many qualified Inuit to fill the roles.
To be fair I don’t think they stole because they are a southerner. I think they are a bad person and there are bad northerners as well. Frankly there’s just bad people in the world and you can find instances of it across Canada be it northerners cheating northerners, southerns cheating northerners , southerns cheating southerns, etc.
You made the comment about there being many qualified Inuit to fill the roles. No that is not the case. Statistics don’t support that at all. Nunavut by far has the worst graduation rates, the worst post secondary enrolment, terrible enrolment into managerial positions due to lack of qualifications, and on and on. Its published statistics.
Does experience make up for some of that. Of course. But many people applying form the south have both the experience and the other qualifications which do make up part of a position and if you like it or not everywhere now uses educational requirements for the most part as a barrier to entry. It’s been that way for years and isn’t expected to stop so time to get with the program.
I am not trying to be harsh. I support local employment, its good it churns money back into towns and towns can start growing organically rather than living off the life support of government welfare which the vast majority of Nunavut does.
How you tackle that, that is for a smarter person who needs to establish a 10 year + plan on how to re-work various things to ensure kids get good exposure and proper educations and want to establish themselves as pillars in their community to be rolemondals for the next generation to start a trend. Right now with a 50-55% high school completion rate that just does not exist. I realize theres a 100 different factors, but saying there’s to many factors to fix things is an excuse and barrier to progress. Maybe our next MP!
I don’t think painting a picture that says southerns are crooks because see look at this instance is exactly correct though. I am sure someone will comment and say hey look at these other three instances, see its conclusive!
Only it was like 1.2 m bunch of crooks like all the office workers down in paridice no Newfoundland operated & own hel get away with it & Inuit already paying the price ? .
I disagree with your statement and don’t think it is fair to say that everyone in Newfoundland is a thief.
The guy has already been told he has to repay over $500,000 and rightfully so, he stole from the company and hopefully the court will penalize him further.
What is missing here is why did it take so long to figure out what Mr. Reed was doing? Truth is we didn’t want to look at it because there were Toyota Tundra’s going to board members and ATV’s to many of the communities as shut up gifts.
What has happened here is that one person knew how to buy the soles of the board members by providing them with gifts as such. You probably didn’t notice how quick one Toyota Tundra quickly became an asset instead of individually owned in Iqaluit.
The ignorance of the board members is normal. Many of the board members are not qualified or understand what they have committed to and the fact they accpet these gifts gives guys like Reed and people like HF untouchable. At the end of the day the board of directors approved it because it put them in a situation where one thief can’t question another. The same thing is happening with many other groups like QC, the boards are token members enjoying the gifts (bribes) that they are getting while others live in mansions and again, one thief can’t question another thief.
There are many smart Inuk’s that can replace the Reed’s but may require training or mentoring and they will be successful. Don’t blame southerners for this when the problem started at home. Question who discovered what was happening and was removed from the board when he questioned it. There are many honest Inuk’s and Southerners who are honest and at the end of the day care passionately about these businesses.
Arviat Strong!
I wonder if this is the only case where orgs are getting ripped off, remember an hamlet in kivalliq? countless regionals who were doing well are going belly up…why is that? the people up here are not the masters of their own lands and businesses, many I think are getting robbed blind…
Inuit people are just as good at ripping off their own people as any one else is !
But of course we must not talk about that. All races are the same.
No sense of fairness or decency at all. Auditors like myself, now retired , advised councils
and organizations for years but no action was ever taken.
As usual it is up to the people.