The chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations is clearing the air about a recent decision to remove — and then reinstate a federation vice-chief.
Two weeks ago, Vice-Chief Kimberly Jonathan was removed from office after an appeals board determined her election victory in October was tainted due to problems with the voting machine.
The board said a by-election would have to take place.
However, this week, the FSIN said that was no longer the case and the appeals board acted out of turn.
Chief Perry Bellegarde says the election act and executive act are clear — a by-election can only be ordered through a resolution passed by the executive and the IGC.
He says that resolution didn’t happen, and it’s been decided the issue will be picked up again at the next FSIN legislative assembly in June:
“Yeah, no, she’s back at work. She’s First Vice-Chief, she’s won the election. You know, the other things pointed out were the natural flow of justice. It took five, six months for the tribunal to hear. I understand that took some time, as well — but even that took a long time for them to make a decision.”
Bellegarde says Jonathan is already back at work and he doesn’t think there are any hard feelings:
“No, we’re following our processes internally as FSIN. It’s in our internal process governance piece. I always say we have a lot of issues to deal with, you know, we want to keep moving forward together to respect our internal governance processes.”
He adds the commission is recommending that that chiefs vacate the tribunal’s decision, but the matter will be tabled at the Assembly.