Kahtou 0004
February 2001
SCOTT EDMONDS
WINNIPEG (CP) - A native treatment centre that made headlines by sending staff on a taxpayer-funded Caribbean cruise is being sued by the federal government for alleged misuse of public money.
Health Canada, in papers filed Thursday in Court of Queen's Bench, is seeking the return of $2.5 million in surplus finds it says may have been kept improperly by the Virginia Sagkeeng Memorial Treatment Foundation. It also wants to appoint a receiver, dissolve the foundation itself and recover money in addition to the surplus that may have been spent improperly.
In the documents, the government alleges the foundation and its directors "have not ensured and continue to fail to ensure that the public funds entrusted to them are or have been solely used for the purposes stated." Health Canada cut the funding last week to the centre after it claimed staff refused to co-operate with an audit into books that centred around the time of the fall Caribbean trip.
The department funds 95 per cent of the centre's budget.
The 76-bed facility, on the Sagkeeng reserve 145 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, receives more than $7 million a year from Health Canada to help victims of drug, alcohol and solvent abuse.
The forensic audit was ordered in October after news reports of the Caribbean cruise - dubbed a professional development exercise - for 70 centre staff and 10 non-staff at an estimated cost of $115,000.
Centre officials later said the trip was financed by bingos.Other allegations about extra-billing and lavish spending by the Sagkeeng centre then surfaced.
There were reports the centre spent $70,000 on Christmas gifts for staff last year, including 12 computers valued at $2,000 each and four Caribbean cruises valued at $1,500 each.
The centre was also planning to build a $3-million swimming pool behind its building.