(file photo/paNOW Staff) 

By Glenn Hicks

accountability

Where’s the report on Pinehouse? NDP says government is dodging

Feb 13, 2020 | 5:00 PM

With six weeks of the new year gone, the opposition NDP wants to know why the promised report on the troubled Northern Village of Pinehouse still hasn’t been shown to the public.

The government previously said the investigation into the village’s dealings and administration would be known by the end of 2019 and now says the report is expected “very soon.”

NDP ethics critic David Forbes said after years of questions surrounding the village and a call from the Information and Privacy Commissioner to investigate, the government should be leading the way on this file.

…the Sask. Party government has really dodged this one _{-David Forbes}

“We’re looking for the provincial government to really step up and do the right thing,” Forbes told paNOW. “They campaigned many years ago on transparency and accountability because they believed at that time it was the right thing, [but] it hasn’t changed.”

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Forbes said the community deserved answers about Pinehouse but “the Sask. Party government has really dodged this one when we have a commissioner demanding something be done. They just seem to want to sit on their hands on this one.

“There are questions about expenses, bills and receipts, and whether people have the capacity to do their work [at Pinehouse],” he said. “This is what the citizens are worried about — what’s actually happening up there.”

The administrator at the village previously told paNOW she didn’t have the resources to cope with the abundance of Freedom of Information requests the village had been sent over the years.

In an email to paNOW the government’s media relations department said it anticipates the Vancise report would be released very soon but could not speak to specific issues while it is was under review.

The latest probe at Pinehouse – being undertaken by former justice William Vancise — was prompted by a scathing report from the Privacy and Information Commissioner in 2018 pointing to a lack of cooperation and non-compliance to Freedom of Information requests over many years regarding the village’s finances and governance.

A leaked report in 2019 following an initial inspection of the village by independent inspector Neil Robertson, included a recommendation the mayor, Mike Natomagen and one councillor, Conrad Misponas, be removed from office. Following that initial inspection, a full investigation including an audit was ordered and the administration has been under special supervision for many months.

The government has not commented on any of the initial findings but said it was confident in the actions being taken to address the concerns raised by the provincial privacy commissioner.

Asked if he thought the delay in the report indicated the government would try to conceal elements of the investigation from the public, the NDP’s Forbes said: “Well, we did find out about the fishing trips from Minister Donna Harpauer through all of this.”

Harpauer, when she was minister of municipal relations, failed to disclose all-expenses-paid fishing trips for her and her partner, paid for by the village. The province’s conflict of interest commissioner later determined Harpauer had not been in conflict.

Harpauer, now the finance minister, recused herself from discussions involving the Village of Pinehouse. The government confirmed last year she would not take part in conversations as the Ministry of Government Relations continued its formal probe into the northern municipality’s finances and operations.

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glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@princealbertnow