Canada

band member says.

August 4, 2014

By putting himself in line for a lucrative bonus just weeks before a massive provincial land deal was set to close, Kwikwetlem First Nation chief Ron Giesbrecht knowingly orchestrated his history-making payday, alleges a band member now leading the charge to turf him from office.

“This [project] has been in the works for a while.… Ron saw an opportunity to make some money, so he jumped in and took over,” said Kwikwetlem band member Ron Jackman.

Last Thursday, documents released under the new First Nations Financial Transparency Act revealed that Chief Giesbrecht collected $914,219 in 2013/2014 — effectively making him the highest-paid elected representative in all of Canada.

Most of the cash was due to an $800,000 bonus Chief Giesbrecht received as the likely result of an unspecified $8 million “economic benefit agreement” inked between the First Nation and the Province of B.C.

At the time, the chief would have only been a few months into a stint as the band’s economic development officer, where, under a since-removed portion of the contract for that job, he was entitled to receive a 10% cut of all “capital projects and business opportunities.”

In Chief Giesbrecht’s only media interview since his massive income became public, he said that the bonus came as a surprise.

“Whoever thought the bonus would be this much? I tell you, I never would have,” he told a reporter from Tri Cities NOW.

On Monday, Mr. Jackman questioned that statement.

“Once we get a forensic audit, it will come out that Ron knew about this before he took the job on,” he said.

Until January of 2013, the post of economic development officer had been held by Andrea Aleck, a former health director with the Vancouver-area Tsleil-Waututh Nation who later went on to take a job with the nearby Katzie First Nation.

Eight months later, in September, Chief Giesbrecht took over the post “in order to keep millions of dollars worth of projects moving,” according to a Tri-Cities NOW account of their interview with the chief.

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