Poverty in the midst of plenty would be a good slogan for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (DIAND). Plenty of money, plenty of waste, plenty of mismanagement. Data obtained by the CTF through Access to Information reveals that dramatically increased funding has done nothing to improve the financial situation of Indian bands. In fact, the situation is dramatically worse.

Since 1992-93, direct funding from DIAND for native bands in Canada increased by 47% from $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion. In Saskatchewan funding is up 40%. The story is similar in other provinces, with increases of 63% in BC, a whopping 108% in Alberta, 54% in Manitoba, 26% in Ontario, and 38% in Quebec, and a more modest 8% in Atlantic Canada. Such vast increases are amazing, especially considering that the budgets of most other government departments and services were slashed in the 1990s. Today, about $4 billion is spent every year on First Nations by DIAND alone.

Such an influx of cash might have been expected to improve the lot of impoverished natives. Yet over the same period, the number of Indian bands in financial trouble almost doubled from 98 to 191. Among those, the number of bands in receivership increased five-fold from 4 to 20. If taxpayers ever needed an argument that massive government spending can't solve every problem, this is it.

Indian bands are suffering financially, and band members are suffering - period. A StatsCan report earlier this year showed that Saskatchewan's Indian reserves are Canada's poorest in terms of education, housing, income, and employment. Clearly, a great deal of the money that is going to bands is not finding its way to helping people, but is being misspent or diverted.

There is an astonishing failure of accountability for the spending of public money by many Indian bands. This has been encouraged by the "blank cheque" practices of DIAND bureaucrats in Ottawa, much to the dismay of Canada's Auditor General.

As reported in the National Post last April, Auditor General Denis Desautels warns that the Indian Affairs department risks compounding existing poverty and despair on native reserves by failing to account for how money is being spent. He adds, "the department is not taking adequate steps to ensure that allegations of wrongdoing, including complaints and disputes related to funding arrangements, are appropriately resolved." Back in 1996 Desautels complained about "severe deficiencies in Ottawa's system of monitoring funds spend on reserves for welfare, education, housing, and economic development."

Indian people are becoming increasingly vocal about band mismanagement, and have lodged hundreds of complaints about band councils and administrators. But instead of vigorously addressing these concerns, Ottawa has tip-toed around the issues, and has been slow to act. Whether this is due to a misguided sense of political correctness, stumbling self-government initiatives, or bureaucratic inertia is beside the point. Healthy communities cannot survive under banana republic rules.

Canadians living on reserves, and taxpayers everywhere, deserve accountability for how those billions are spent.