Sachs Harbour boycotts IRC meetings after failed attempt to oust chair

Board members of the Sachs Harbour Community Corporation (SHCC) are boycotting meetings with the leadership of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) after a failed attempt to remove IRC chair and CEO Duane Smith from power.

Vernon Amos, chair of the SHCC, says the IRC has failed to adequately support and invest in his community and says Smith is to blame.

"He runs the IRC absolutely and completely," said Amos.

But chairs from the five other communities in the IRC — who together with Smith and Amos make up the board of the organization — say the SHCC's complaints are unfounded.

Confidence motion tabled in August

The dispute stems from a motion passed unanimously by the Sachs Harbour Community Corporation in July 2018.

The letter, signed by Amos, contains the text of a "motion of non-confidence" in Smith's leadership passed by the SHCC's board of directors.

The relationship between the IRC and SHCC is broken.- Letter from Vernon Amos to IRC board

In the letter, Amos states the IRC failed to visit the community as part of its corporate tour for two years in a row, and points to an "absolute lack of IRC presence and funding" in the community.

"The relationship between the IRC and SHCC is broken," reads the letter. "The only option for our community to prosper, is to remove … Smith."

Read the SHCC letter in full.

When Amos brought the letter forward at a meeting of the IRC board, it was rejected outright by the other six members.

"The board found it invalid," said Smith. "There was nothing to verify anything within that letter."

With the exception of Amos, "there was unanimous consent that Duane did a good job," said Eddie Dillon, the chair of the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation and the secretary/treasurer of the IRC.

As a result, says Amos, the SHCC decided to boycott future visits of the IRC to the community.

"We didn't think [meeting with the IRC] would accomplish anything," said Amos.

IRC failed to support community corp: Amos

Community corporations like the SHCC receive funding from the IRC, and from federal and territorial governments, to provide programming to community members and invest in community development. Funding amounts are determined partly by population size.

Amos says Sachs Harbour is in a "dire economic situation."

"We kept trying to make the argument for increased funding," he said. "It's happened, but not in any meaningful way to make a difference for how we operate here."

Dillon told the CBC that the SHCC has failed to file financial audits for the past two years, which jeopardizes the organization's ability to seek funding.

"We live under the law," said Dillon. "Our funders tell us we have to have this audit trail built in... You can't have one community not submit and put the rest of the five communities in the region in jeopardy." 

But Amos provided documents to the CBC that showed that wasn't true. The SHCC had in fact completed an audit in 2016 and has engaged an auditor to review financial statements from 2017.

Amos said those documents were ratified at the corporation's annual general meeting. CBC has been unable to independently verify that claim. 

He called Dillon's comments "an excellent way... to deflect from the real issue."

"To infer we aren't doing our due diligence as a corporation, that's borderline slanderous," he added.

Amos also says when an IRC delegation was weathered out of visiting the community to offer workshops to SHCC staff, they "made no attempt" to reschedule a visit.

"That's a total lie," said Dillon. "There have been meetings with the IRC. Our staff offered … to go into that community at any time to discuss programming ... They never did respond to that offer."

CBC News attempted to contact the other members of the IRC board. One declined to comment, and the rest could not be reached.

Press releases on the IRC website confirm the corporate tour was cancelled in 2017 and "postponed" in 2018.

In 2017, the IRC scheduled seven workshops in the community on topics as varied as cruise ship policy and environmental monitoring. In 2018, only two workshops were scheduled — one on financial practices in February, and one on "budgeting, reporting, and monitoring" in October.

A spokesperson for the IRC confirmed Smith and several others visited the community on Oct. 16, but several of the directors — including Amos — declined to attend.

Calls for membership vote on leadership

Amos says, following the board meeting in August, he started distributing the letter to the directors of the community corporations.

"I was shocked to find that a lot of the community corporation directors … were unaware of the motion," said Amos.

Each community corporation has a board of seven voting directors, including the chair. They vote to elect the chair and CEO of the IRC.

Dillon said the unanimous objection of the motion from other board members meant the letter did not warrant a wider vote.

"We can't keep going back to community [corporations] to get further direction if we think as a group we're right," he said.

Amos and the rest of the SHCC board are up for re-election on Dec. 14. A few months later, Smith's first term will be up and community corporation directors will vote for the next chair of the IRC.

"I don't have any hope for any type of change," said Amos. "What I hope will happen is that people will be better informed of what's happening and, hopefully, why it's happened."