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The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) says its current management has “discovered serious and significant financial irregularities” that its board was unaware of, as it shutters businesses and sells off property worth millions of dollars.
The prominent national advocacy group has been engulfed in turmoil over the last year, but it now says it wants to return to collective advocacy, saying in an unsigned statement issued Tuesday that it’s co-operating fully with a federal audit covering fiscal years 2018-2024 while conducting an internal review of its own.
“We are committed to rebuilding NWAC as an organization of truth and transparency,” the statement said.
One grassroots advocate is skeptical, however. Bridget Tolley is a fixture of activism and advocacy in Ottawa, organizing rallies and vigils through the volunteer-based group Families of Sisters in Spirit, including an annual vigil on Oct. 4.
She has been seeking justice for more than two decades after her mother, Gladys Tolley, was struck and killed by a Quebec provincial police cruiser in front of her home in Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg in Quebec.
“I don’t care about any of those organizations. They mean nothing to me,” said Tolley.
“I think the work that we’ve been doing is all because of the grassroots. The national organizations are only there from 9 to 5. Stuff happens at nights and on weekends with missing and murdered [Indigenous women] and there’s nobody around to help us, but yet these guys get all the funding.”
Tolley was first involved with NWAC in 2004. A year later, NWAC secured funding for Sisters in Spirit, a five-year research, education and policy initiative on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. But the funding ran out in 2010 and wasn’t renewed.
“This is when everything went downhill. We never heard a thing from them. They never invited families to meet with them. Nothing,” Tolley said.
That’s why Tolley said she was surprised to get an email from NWAC just last week asking if the organization could help with this year’s Oct. 4 vigil. Tolley hesitated to respond, concerned NWAC may be trying to use the grassroots to boost its own credibility.
“I was shocked,” she said.
“I don’t want them really to be involved because they used us the last time, and it was very hurtful and the pain is still there. It’s triggering.”
Headquarters for sale for $8M
CBC Indigenous asked NWAC for an interview on Monday, after reviewing Quebec property records for the organization’s real estate holdings. NWAC’s statement said it will not be giving interviews, and provided no details about the alleged financial irregularities.
Public records show NWAC’s newly renovated headquarters in the Hull sector of Gatineau, Que., which is being sold for an asking price of $8 million, was twice remortgaged in recent years for several million dollars more than the initial purchase price. The group was undertaking renovations that included a café, gift shop and art gallery during that time.
NWAC bought the property in 2018, obtaining a mortgage for $1.8 million, records show. The organization got another mortgage in 2020 for $5.9 million, and the records show NWAC got another mortgage worth $7.5 million in 2022, right around the peak of the pandemic-era real estate boom.
A lawyer who reviewed the deeds said this is not unusual, as each new loan likely paid off the remaining balance of the previous one, and the cash may have been used to finance construction or the property may have been used as collateral to pay for other ventures.
“Some real estate, especially in the area that they were investing in, was not — how can we say — very up to date,” said Nicolas Vinette, a Gatineau-based lawyer with Duclos soci été d’avocats.
The organization now finds itself trying to sell a multimillion-dollar investment in an area surrounded mainly by federal buildings, he said, which was hit hard by the onset of remote work during the pandemic, and which is now sought after more for residential rather than commercial real estate.
“For commercial purposes, it’s not the easiest market,” Vinette said.
But there is still an opportunity to succeed with the investment, he added.
“It’ll just be a question of: Is somebody willing to pay that amount of money for this building?”
Mi’kmaq lawyer Pam Palmater says the Native Women’s Association of Canada shouldn’t be planning a boutique hotel.
NWAC’s pivot to real estate development was part of a plan to give itself more freedom by generating own-source revenue, a move some critics branded as elitist and disconnected.
NWAC’s routine audit for 2023 indicates the organization had two mortgages that year, one worth $5.8 million paid in monthly installments of about $37,000. The other mortgage was worth about $610,000.
NWAC also owns a property, its resiliency lodge, in Chelsea, Que., about 15 kilometres north of Ottawa, which is also for sale. Public records show NWAC bought the property in 2019 for $880,000, with an associated mortgage of $850,000.
In its statement, NWAC said the proceeds from the sale of its assets will be re-invested in advocacy for Indigenous women’s social, economic, cultural and political wellbeing.