Did Northern Development Trust Lose The Commonwealth Entry

Wednesday, March 02, 2011 03:48 AM

If you had taken time to look at the posted information on the Northern Development Initiative Trust web site, you would have noticed something was conspicuously missing.

Northern Trust posts its annual reports on how it distributed the money it was given by the Province.

What is missing, ( or was missing until today) is the whole fourth quarter report of 2009 showing its grants and loans.

Opinion 250 was interested in seeing the full financial details on the dollars loaned to the Commonwealth Group for the downtown proiperty purchases.

The only reference to Commonwealth, comes in the form of the $1 million dollar interest free loan handed out by Northern Development to Commonwealth Health Inc. That money came from the Western Diversification Fund.

But what about the rest of the money loaned to Commonwealth? There was not one entry indicating Commonwealth ever received any money from the Trust. The fact is however, it did, but it wasn't showing up in the report.

We contacted the Chair of NDI Trust and asked him to review the publicly posted document to see if perhaps he could spot the items, it is possible we just skipped over them, but Evan Saugstad called us back to say the whole 4th quarter for 2009 had not been included, he didn't know why. He also assured us the information would be posted by today.

The fund, for the benefit of Northern Development Trust, is money that came from the sale of BC rail. It is Taxpayer money, to be used for the benefit of all taxpayers and regardless of how the Trust determines what is for the greater good of the area, the first rule of thumb is to ensure that when you hand out that taxpayer money you show just who received it.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion

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Posted on Wednesday, March 02, 2011 03:48 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

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Comments

Posted by: rattyboy on March 2 2011 8:52 AM

wake up people!!! stop complaining about pot holes and look at the real issues. Ben is the only one who has the b-lls to stand up to what is happening here. By the time the dust settles, the tax payer will be holding their open and empty wallets and commonwealth will be swimming in our tax dollars.

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 2 2011 10:23 AM

It is strange that 2009 has a print date of Sept. 23 and all other years are complete with print dates in January of the following year. Accidental oversight--- doubtful when even attendance at some of the board meetings was not forthcoming and took FOI requests to get partial in site.

Another that I found strange when reading through these reports was the use of terms such as "BDC/Confidential" and "Competitiveness Consulting Client" as the proponent of grants of up to $37,950. If someone is getting $$$$$$$ in grants, there is no way it should be kept confidential. The public has a right to know where ALL the money is going.

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 2 2011 12:01 PM

High noon and the complete documents are still not posted - they must have spent the morning at Staples stocking up on White Out or changing the names on the documents from "Commonwealth Group" to " Northern Industry Expansion Client"

Posted by: giterdun on March 2 2011 12:34 PM

This whole Commonwealth/NDI thing stinks. Hope everybody keeps the heat on. Taxpayers have every right to know all the details.

Posted by: Resident on March 2 2011 5:25 PM

Interesting little item in the 2009 report. We keep hearing from the city the District energy system cost is 14 million yet in the 2009 NDI report the city received an outright grant of 3 million but it lists the District energy system cost as 19 million.
Just a cool 5 million more than the general public are being led to believe by Rodgers and council.
A total waste of money at 14 million and a absolute disaster at 19 million.

Posted by: lonesome sparrow on March 2 2011 7:47 PM

The white out comment that I made at noon appears to be spot on. Not to post the document as of January 2010 makes the optics look even worse. To post "any decommitted or cancelled projects have been removed" for only 2009 smells fishy. Does that mean that there are no other decommitted(sic) or cancelled(sic) projects in any other year.

The taxpayers have a right to know what these projects are, even if NDI Trust is no longer involved, if even one penny of our money was used.

Posted by: Eagleone on March 3 2011 9:32 AM

I agree. This is taxpayer money in trust. If they are engaged in ponzi schemes with public dollars involving realestate, then the public has a right to know. What about the millions they loose in the investing in stocks... all sorts of opportunity for leakage of public dollars for private leverage.