Angry in the Great White North

From page A6 of the December 5 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, an article by Kate Jaimet:

A Liberal candidate, who registered his former business in a federal program that gives favourable treatment to native companies, is coming under criticism from his NDP rival, who says she doubts he’s really an aboriginal.

Celine Brault, the NDP candidate in the Quebec riding of Pontiac, said Liberal incumbent MP David Smith’s claim to be aboriginal sounds “far-fetched.”

Ms. Brault based her doubts on an article in a community newspaper, in which the chief of the Kitigan Zibi reserve, which is adjacent to the farm where Mr. Smith grew up, stated Mr. Smith is not part of his band.

“He is not a native. He’s never been registered with our band. As far as being a status Indian according to the Indian Act, he is not,” Chief Jean-Guy Whiteduck said in an interview.

But Mr. Smith defended his claim to being aboriginal, saying his maternal great-grandmother was native.

“I’m a Metis,” he said. “I’m a member of l’Alliance Autochtone du Quebec. I’m a member of the Congress of Aboriginal People of Canada. But again, that is a private thing.”

The question of Mr. Smith’s aboriginal identity arose as part of a larger controversy over government contracts awarded to Abotech, a company Mr. Smith founded in 2000.

Mr. Smith, who was an entrepreneur before entering politics, said he founded a numbered company in 1996. In 2000, the company, renamed Abotech, bought part-ownership of a small software firm and began looking for government contracts.

The federal government has a policy of offering certain contracts, called “setasides,” exclusively to aboriginal companies. Mr. Smith said he registered Abotech as an aboriginal company and hoped to win some of these contracts.

“We heard of this set-aside program for aboriginal firms. That’s where we signed up. We did it through all different government organizations,” Mr. Smith told the Citizen last week. “We completed the forms. And they asked the proofs (of aboriginal ownership) and they accepted it, after review.”

Mr. Smith said that in the end, Abotech did not benefit in any way from being registered as an aboriginal company.

“There was no contracts that were given (to Abotech) on the set-aside program ... It didn’t get any advantages. None,” he said.

But some contracts granted to Abotech have raised questions.

An internal review by the auditing firm KPMG found Abotech was granted about $1 million worth of contracts between 2001 and 2005 by Frank Brazeau, a contracting officer with Consulting and Audit Canada in the Department of Public Works. Mr. Brazeau has since been suspended without pay for alleged improper handling of contracts.

Mr. Smith said he knew Mr. Brazeau, because they grew up in the same small town.

Mr. Smith declined to say how close their friendship was, and said if there was any improper handling of contracts, he wasn’t involved.

“I respected the procedures. If there was some things which were done in non-conformity, me, I don’t know,” said Mr. Smith, who sold Abotech to his wife and two teenage children, in order to avoid conflicts of interest, when he got a job with Public Works at the end of 2003.

Mr. Smith became the Liberal candidate for Pontiac in 2004, and won the seat.

The connection between Mr. Smith, Mr. Brazeau, and the government contracts granted to Abotech is the subject of an investigation by ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro, instigated at the request of Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre.

The investigation does not touch on Mr. Smith’s aboriginal identity.

Ms. Brault said she also looks forward to “urgent clarification,” both of the aboriginal question, and the government contracts.

“I’m not saying it’s not a legitimate thing for him to claim aboriginal status through his great-grandmother,” Ms. Brault said. “I’m just saying that the details surrounding this and the comments being made by the chief of the aboriginal community lead us to believe that this is not quite as clean and as ethical as it should be.”

The community newspaper that piqued Brault's interest was the West Quebec Post. The lead article for the November 25 edition was a joint effort by this blogger and reporter Julie Murray.

David Smith insists that no set-asides were awarded to Abotech. That might be true, in which case the question of why Abotech is being punished is still open.

But the question of his aboriginal status, which in this blog was reported as something that happened after David Smith graduated high school, and probably before April 2001, when his company underwent the formal name change to "Abotech", is now a local election issue with some national notice.

Whether David Smith profited or not, a tenuous or ilegitimate claim will seem dishonest and self-serving to many people, an act that can only hurt the efforts of legitimate aboriginals trying to succeed in business or in government.

We'll see how it plays over the next few weeks in Pontiac.