Board Of The National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation Wants To Extend Assets Forfeiture Provisions To Convicted Official In The Virginia Fontaine Case

OTTAWA, March 12, 2005 - At their meeting in Ottawa on March 12, the Board of Directors of the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation were apprised of the sentence delivered to Paul Cochrane, Senior Health Canada bureaucrat, in relation to his fraudulent channelling of millions of dollars in Federal funding to the Virginia Fontaine Foundation and to his pocketing of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks, thought to be part of his personal wealth today.

The Board, chaired by Chief Austin Bear, from the Muskaday First Nation in Saskatchewan, administers the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation, a non-profit organisation constituted of a National Office regrouping Regional First Nations and Inuit Bodies operating at grassroot level in First Nations and Inuit communities. The mandate of NNAPF is to work with First Nations and Inuit communities in order to renew the Federal Addictions System for Aboriginal people in Canada. NNAPF’s national, regional and local scope places it in a unique position to voice the perspectives of its constituents in the matter of the Virginia Fontaine case.

The Board deeply regrets the message that this minimal sentence will convey to the Aboriginal stakeholders in this infamous case. In choosing to give Cochrane a one-year sentence, out of the five-year option provided for by law, the Crown declared that this punishment was harsh enough to send a deterrent message to those who breach the public trust. The Board wishes to convey its disagreement with the principles underpinning that decision.

Although the Board is in full agreement with Crown attorney Pelletier’s statement that " Mr. Cochrane's high-level position and responsibility demanded he set the best possible example of ethical behaviour and that the breach of trust he committed was among the most serious Canada has seen in years", it wishes to point out that the full extent of this breach of trust has not been conveyed clearly enough by the Crown or by the Media.

The highest duty of the Canadian Government to Aboriginal people is the discharge of its fiduciary responsibility in several areas - Education and Health amongst others. Funds from the federal government to Aboriginal Health Programs are part of historic agreements with First Nations, not charitable hand-outs. Concomitant with this fiduciary duty is the responsibility regarding accountability to the First Nations people these programs are meant to serve.

Accountability to the people served by no means diminishes the responsibility of the Government to Canadian tax payers, but it is too often occulted from official and media reports, leading to the kind of confused blanket blame Aboriginal communities, particularly the Sakgeeng community at the geographic centre of the storm, have unjustly suffered.

Paul Cochrane’s breach of trust in this particular case is in fact a violation of this fiduciary duty to the Aboriginal stakeholders in the Virginia Fontaine foundation.

These stakeholders include the aboriginal youth, women and men, who sought to heal from their addictions and came for treatment in the Centre funded by the Virginia Fontaine Foundation. These vulnerable segments of Aboriginal communities were forced into a situation that placed them and their families at greater risk. Although the judge in the case determined that Mr. Cochrane was not a danger to anyone and therefore deserved a light sentence, he was in fact, through his fiduciary failure, a real danger for many years to those who depended on him to insure they had a safe environment to heal.

Moreover, way before charges were made, First Nations were not able to access funding for legitimate crisis situations because inappropriate funds were being allocated to Paul Cochrane’s favourite organisations, namely the Virginia Fontaine Foundation and other organisations still under scrutiny.

The fundamentals of an addiction treatment for those who have decided to heal, is that the pain previously numbed by alcohol comes to the surface. During the course of the program, they begin to trust they are in an environment safe for them to open up. At that stage, they become ready to experience the real suffering that comes with confronting their addiction. It was at that crucial point that they were sent home or to a new centre. They, their family and community were left to deal with raw vulnerability and painful emotions from the breach of trust. Many young people considered suicide as a relief from that situation.

The closing of the treatment centre and the reasons for its closure also threw the entire helping community at the Treatment centre under the same, unrelenting cloud of suspicion, although the scandal involved only a few individuals. The rumours and media reports in all major newspapers, television and radio channels in Canada profoundly troubled and divided the small community, who felt deeply the unjust loss of their credibility as Aboriginal people, leaving wounds and a lasting distrust of government.

The fallout from the scandal spread well beyond the Sakgeeng community. General accountability and transparency from Aboriginal bodies to Government was made to appear as faulty and corrupted, when, in fact, Aboriginal organisations at all levels are the most scrutinized entities in Canada. Aboriginal accountability was demonstrated right at the beginning of the controversy and on many subsequent occasions: information was brought forward to the Government of Canada, the Department of Health Canada, who failed to heed the warnings and to act.

The National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation has a three-point message to convey:

Mr. Cochrane has apologized to Government, to his colleagues and to the Canadian public. He now owes an apology to the Aboriginal individuals, families and communities who suffered directly from his violation of fiduciary responsibility, and to all those whose reputation were unjustly tainted.

Mr. Perry Fontaine, the Aboriginal administrator of the Virginia Fontaine Foundation is currently going through trial. Justice would dictate that both he and Mr. Cochrane be struck with the more severe sentence provided by law for this kind of criminal behaviour. It is disturbing to the Board of the National Native Addictions Partnership Foundation that both parties, who have enriched themselves at the expense of the most vulnerable people, could possibly be freed with little damage to their fraudulently acquired assets in less than a year.

In regards to the private wealth accumulated through fraud and bribery by Mr. Cochrane, the NNAPF’s Board would like to see these assets retrieved and returned to the Addictions Program. Canada is after all the first western democracy to become involved in asset forfeiture in the case of drug dealing. Proceeds from seized assets are paid into the consolidated revenue of the responsible federal or provincial government. There is therefore a precedent that can be extended to assets fraudulently diverted into personal accounts from public funds.

The Board hopes that this case will clarify an important principle in relation to accountability. It is a two-way process. Administrators of public funds are not only accountable to higher levels of authority, but also to the often forgotten stakeholders: those who are meant to be served by these funds. In this case, they are the ones who suffered most. They deserve at least the same compassion that was accorded to Paul Cochrane, in anticipation of his 8- month "suffering" in jail.