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Breadcrumb Trail Links Saskatchewan
“I was trying to do what was right … and I don’t regret that,” former administrator Danette Starblanket testified.
Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatoon Photo by Matt Smith /Saskatoon StarPhoenix Article content
The former top administrator at the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations alleged in court that the organization’s chiefs misspent money, demanded a colleague and removed her from the job after she tried to intervene.
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Danette Starblanket, the plaintiff, tested this week as part of a years-long civil court battle over her 2016 departure from the organization, which is the top political body for 74 Saskatchewan First Nations. The trial centers on whether Starblanket unfairly lost the job and was later pushed out of the organization.
Testimony has delved beyond that, highlighting stories of two women — Starblanket and Kim Jonathan, a former FSIN vice-chief — alleging spurious spending and bullying at the FSIN.
“I hadn’t been complying … I wasn’t allowing them to violate those policies and procedures, and I wasn’t acting in a corrupt and crooked manner. I was trying to do what was right … and I don’t regret that,” Starblanket testified.
“And If I was to do it all again, I would do it the same way, because I could look in the mirror and say I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Starblanket, an academic, worked intermittently at the FSIN for more than a decade before becoming the chief operating officer—the right hand, essentially, to the FSIN’s elected chief.
She first filled that role under Jonathan while Jonathan served as interim chief in late 2014. Later, Starblanket said FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron offered her the job after he was first elected in 2015.
Kim Jonathan, pictured here in 2017, was the first woman elected to the FSIN executive. She chose not to run in 2018 after a bitter falling out with her fellow elected officials. Photo by Kayle Neis/Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Starblanket said tensions mounted because of her support for Jonathan, who was facing mental health issues at the time and was the brunt of bullying from her fellow elected chiefs.
“She needed support, and instead they attacked her,” Starblanket tested. Jonathan also tested about a pattern of such behavior, calling it a “playground of bullies.”
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During cross-examination, the FSIN’s lawyers questioned Starblanket’s recollection, saying FSIN chiefs had in fact encouraged Jonathan to take time off.
Starblanket tested she began to be left out of key communications. Later, her signing authority was suspended. She said Cameron informed her in March 2016 that her contract would not be renewed.
The FSIN’s lawyers noted the annual contracts allow the FSIN to terminate employment without cause any point after a probationary period if appropriate notice is given.
Starblanket said Cameron had given her the impression she would remain his EOO for a considerably longer period of time.
She testified Cameron told her she was “blocking too much” when it came to submitted expenses by other elected vice-chiefs.
FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron. Photo by Michelle Berg/Saskatoon StarPhoenix
She said those included money taken from an early childcare program to hire a political staffer; travel expenses and $200,000 that was meant for treaty education but instead went to two staffers’ pay, benefits and travel stays, including accommodation in Saskatoon that Starblanket said should have been paid by those employees out of their own salaries.
She wept on the witness stand when recalling a meeting when she asked chiefs to approve that funding, part of a larger $2.1 million fund she said came from casino revenues.
“(The chiefs) told me, ‘Danette, we’re going to grant this to you, this $2.1 million dollars, and you’re going to promise us that it’s spent properly.’ I made that promise to the chiefs, and I was violating that promise by allowing that and signing off in that binder for that kind of spending deviations,” Starblanket said.
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Jonathan tested that frivolous spending — including what she called “bogus contracts” — was tolerated and even encouraged by Cameron.
That clashed with stories she’d heard about early FSIN chiefs packing baloney sandwiches to save cash and scraping together gas money to travel to Ottawa, Jonathan said.
She previously brought those issues to public attention in 2018, when her second term expired. She did not seek re-election.
“I knew they didn’t have money to throw away. At my core, I knew that wasn’t what FSIN was supposed to be for,” she said.
A third witness, former FSIN chief financial officer Marilyn Osecap, testified there were issues in 2016 with elected chiefs exceeding their travel budgets and “wanting to give money to family members.”
The StarPhoenix contacted the FSIN requesting a response to allegations raised in court on Wednesday but got no response by press time.
Cameron and FSIN vice-chief Heather Bear are expected to testify on Thursday.
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