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OTTAWA (CP) - Ontario's auditor general says he has no jurisdiction to assess the extent to which more than $1 billion in gambling cash has helped First Nations.
Jim McCarter says a new legal opinion concludes that hundreds of millions of dollars in Casino Rama profits are off-limits to provincial auditors. That's because the money never flows through Ontario government coffers, he said in an interview. "The government never actually sees the money."
His independent office consulted an external law firm amid calls from public spending watchdogs for more open scrutiny of how Rama profits are spent.
Gambling cash is held in trust by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., before going directly to 134 First Nations, McCarter explained.
It therefore falls outside his mandate to track funds disbursed from the general pot of public money.
Casino Rama, near Orillia, Ont., opened in 1996 as a means to ease native poverty and promote self-sufficiency. It has cleared more than $1 billion - including $91 million in 2004-05 alone - after winnings and expenses.
The money is distributed to native communities through the Ontario First Nations Limited Partnership, an oversight agency created as part of a complex deal with the province. It has four directors named by major provincial native organizations and one independent.
Its spokesman, Steve Williams, says Rama money is strictly accounted for through individual First Nation audits required each year, plus an annual Ontario-wide audit delivered to the province.
Williams pointedly notes that gambling revenues belong to First Nations, not taxpayers in general. Still, he concedes that not even First Nation residents get to see the province-wide Rama reports. Those are for the government and chiefs only.
Williams says several spending complaints received when Rama cash first began to flow have since tapered off.
McCarter says consolidated audits are a good start. But he stressed that those fiscal reports aren't designed to ensure money is being spent wisely or in five approved areas, including community development, health, education, economic and cultural programs.
"Let me be blunt," McCarter said. "How do you know that if $10 million is flowing to the First Nations Partnership, that $10 million goes out to the Indian bands?
"How do you know that the chiefs of those Indian bands are actually spending it on the aboriginals as opposed to spending it for personal purposes? Those would be the two questions that I would ask as an auditor - if we had the access."
In Saskatchewan, gambling revenue flows in such a way that the province can regularly monitor it.
Auditors there have publicly rapped the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority for repeated misspending. A 2004 report red-flagged about $500,000 in questionable receipts for travel, concert and sports tickets, and golf club purchases.
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