NPC board asks chairman to quit

The Nunavut Planning Commission’s board is calling on their chairman and CEO, Bob Lyall, to resign, citing “inconsistencies and irregularities in the financial handling of NPC’s funds” and his refusal to call board meetings.

In a press release and other documents, board members allege that the commission’s $141,000-a-year executive director, Luke Coady, and the commission’s $148,000-a-year chair and CEO, Bob Lyall, blocked requests for financial information, including senior staff salaries, and never let them see annual auditor’s letters – which board members have recently obtained by other means.

Just before the Nunatsiaq News printing deadline this week, the NPC’s bosses replied to their critics in a press release, saying that they have hired the Ottawa-based consulting firm, Aarluk-Consilium, to do a “a management review.”

“As Chair of the Commission over the past 12 years I put the highest priority on ensuring accountability and openness in the operation of this organization. It is unfortunate that the good reputation of the Commission and some of its staff have been put at risk through unsubstantiated public allegations, without a proper review, even though there are appropriate processes in place to review and address such concerns,” Lyall said in the press release.

On May 10, Lyall suspended board meetings, and hired Aarluk-Consilium, apparently without board approval, and in a letter, requested that DIAND minister Andy Scott tell him what to do next.

The NPC’s chair may enter into contracts up to a value of $50,000. The Aarluk-Consilium contract is worth $49,000.

The NPC is one of Nunavut’s “institutions of public government” created under the land claims agreement. It’s a public body financed by the federal government to create land use plans, with a budget of about $3.3 million a year.

Of that, at least $1.3 million a year, according to a leaked auditors’ document from March 31, 2004, goes to staff salaries and benefits.

It’s run by a board whose members are appointed to three-year terms by the minister of Indian affairs and northern development, some of them on the recommendation of the GN or Inuit organizations.

Lyall performs two jobs; he’s the NPC’s chief board member, and the NPC’s most senior management employee. He works out of an office in Taloyoak, his home community, and, according to auditor’s information, was paid $148,000 in 2003-04, not including the value of his VTAs and RRSP contributions.

The auditor’s letters, leaked to Nunatsiaq News last week, were written in 2001, 2003 and 2004 by the NPC’s auditor, John Laratta of MacKay and Partners in Yellowknife.

They contain critical comments about financial management issues within the NPC, including salary increases granted many months before the board approved them, the use of NPC’s corporate credit card, vehicle rentals, hotel bills, and internal financial controls.

One of those letters, addressed to Coady on April 25, 2003, recommends that a board member be appointed to supervise Coady and to perform his annual performance appraisal.

But NPC’s board never saw that, or any other audit letter, until after they obtained copies of them just before a board meeting in Yellowknife this past May 10.

When board members attempted to organize their own board meeting that day to confront Lyall with work performed by an ad hoc committee looking into his job description and salary, he refused to recognize the gathering.

Instead, he suspended future board meetings and wrote to the DIAND minister, seeking “direction” on what to do pending the result of the review by Consilium.

Also that day, the NPC’s financial manager, Carol Sarazin, was suspended with pay. Later that week, locks were changed and a motion-detector security system installed at the NPC office in Cambridge.

“This is so ridiculous, it’s unbelievable,” said Suzie Napayok, the NPC’s secretary-treasurer in an interview this past weekend.

In a May 27 letter, five NPC board members demanded that Lyall call an emergency meeting to discuss a long list of allegations concerning the conduct of the NPC’s executive director, Luke Coady, including the “hold back of information requested by members.”

The letter is signed by Meeka Kilabuk, Pauloosie Kilabuk, William Noah vice-chair Peter Kritaqliluk, and Napayok.

The issues they wanted to discuss include:

An allegation that Coady and Lyall approved a recent contract with the Ottawa-based Aarluk-Consilium consulting firm to study the organization’s policies with no discussion by the board and without the board’s approval – a May 10 letter from Lyall to DIAND minister Andy Scott suggests DIAND’s Nunavut regional office co-operated with Lyall in this arrangement;
Allegations of drinking at the NPC office in Cambridge Bay, at various times between January and Easter this year – the NPC’s human resource policy calls for a drug and alcohol free office;
Allegations concerning the use of NPC computers for business conducted on behalf of Elu Lodge, of which Coady is part-owner;
Complaints that Coady did not provide salary range information when requested by board members in October and November of 2004, and January of 2005;
Questions about staff travel that is approved by the executive director;
Why it has taken 10 years for the NPC to do a land use plan for the West Kitikmeot region; and
The GN’s position on whether the territorial government is still willing to work with the NPC.