Granting the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority (SIGA) a license to build a $35 million casino on the Whitecap Dakota Sioux reserve sets a dangerous precedent.

In recent months the Saskatchewan government has made several public proclamations to the effect that SIGA will not be granted a casino license until it cleans up its act - and rightly so. Since 1999, SIGA has been the subject of annual scorn by Provincial Auditor Fred Wendel - the province's top accountant. Each and every year Wendel has made recommendations to get SIGA's books up to snuff. Those recommendations have been accepted by the government and transmitted to SIGA. But each and every year, Wendel reports on how SIGA has again failed to implement all the recommendations.

In fairness to SIGA, they have implemented some of Wendel's recommendations over the years. In terms of business literacy, these changes have brought SIGA up to a ninth grade reading level, with significant challenges remaining.

Wendel's December, 2003 report outlined a number of startling problems at SIGA - and some of them relate to the recently-approved Whitecap casino.

In recent years Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) adopted a reasonable policy that it would not spend money promoting a new casino in Saskatoon. They felt the responsibility was the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations to gain approval from Saskatoon City Council for the project. They broke that policy by approving a $100,000 expenditure for casino promotion.

SIGA turned around and spent $446 thousand in their failed bid for the Saskatoon project, not including the salaries of senior management who spent their time on the project, which was also not approved by SLGA.

Wendel pointed out that, after all these years, SIGA still hasn't adopted policies around what constitutes a reasonable operating expense. And this is no mom-and-pop outfit - SIGA spends tens of millions every year with no policies governing these expenditures.

And it's not just SIGA that is a culpable in all this. According to Wendel, SLGA failed to audit any of SIGA's casinos in 2003, even though they had planned to do so. When SLGA did get around to auditing their head office, they found unauthorized expenditures on items like sponsorships and promotions. SLGA did not recover those unreasonable expenditures for taxpayers, even though they had the authority to do so. In fact, SLGA approved SIGA's budgets in 2003 and 2004 without even seeing a business plan.

Despite all these very serious concerns, the government had decided to approve Saskatchewan's largest-ever casino project with some conditions. SIGA will have to get their business practices up to snuff within the next two years or else the government will withhold any profits from the new casino. This time the government says it's serious!

Taxpayers should not hold their breath waiting for big changes from SIGA. After all, we've already been waiting for years.

Granting a multi-million dollar project to an organization that hasn't even adopted the most basic business controls sends the wrong message to the public sector. Our government needs to get serious about their finances, and start asking for more accountability and transparency.