Rhino's Ramblings - Pride Dissolves.....
By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary
As I get older and heart disease pounds my body I have started a new ritual where after supper I take a nap.
It’s something I look forward to it seems now on a daily basis. If I don’t get that few hours of an extra nap in I just feel so burnt out.
As I woke up from my daily nap I heard a beep on my phone that MJ Independent's email account had just received a message.
And as usual it was one of the many requests for me to do an investigative story.
This time the email was about the recent announcement Moose Jaw Pride had decided to dissolve their corporation because of the bad debt that suddenly their Board had become privy of.
The email itself said it was the type of story that suited me and attempted to have me go after the present Board Of Moose Jaw Pride and get to the bottom of things.
It's something I'm unlikely to do.
You can read the anonymous email below.
Copy of the email requesting me to look into what is happening at Moose Jaw Pride
But what if I were to tell you I had heard about the alleged goings on at Moose Jaw Pride long ago?
That I had a source within the organization who told me about what still are allegations let us say more than a few months ago.
Would you believe me?
Well if you don't then your answer would be wrong.
Yes, I well knew about the rumors and allegations of financial improprieties well before what the Board revealed their allegations at Sunday afternoon's AGM.
All I can say is my information came from within Moose Jaw Pride itself. And the sources were good ones.
My sources who told me at the time were very angry with the organization or rather how they were being treated by the organization. Then as suddenly as they appeared they disappeared and the promised proof was never provided.
Without the proof and the promised formal interviews the story for all intensive purposes was dead.
Of course when you are told these things you have to take them with a grain of salt. It goes well beyond is it true or not.
You need to look at exactly why any insiders were leaking things to you about their “friends.”
Simply because it was likely a revenge thing does not mean a person should not take a look at it.
But at the same time you need to be careful because the person could be minimizing their role or worse yet shifting the blame from themselves to others who are innocent or simply oblivious to what's happening.
It's a balancing act that will play with your nerves even at the best of times.
I should start out by saying MJ Independent was and is not - as far as we know - accredited or recognized as media by Moose Jaw Pride. As such we just do not cover the organization - it is not that their stories are not important (everyone’s is) but there are also time constraints to remember.
There may well be other investigative stories we have promised to look at and are working on as health conditions and other stories allow.
With that said personally I think Moose Jaw needs an organization such as Moose Jaw Pride or GLAMJ as place to gather where people can safely live their lives without a bunch of yahoos harassing them.
My own personal thoughts are people can live their lives as they chose. So long as they are consenting adults doing their own thing and not out harming non-consenting adults, children and/or animals.
Moose Jaw's Checkered History With Non-Profits
But to get to the bottom of the issue people need to understand certain facts about Moose Jaw.
This city is really rife with groups who over the years have come along telling the world - or rather the world as far as Moose Jaw goes - they are God's gift to your problems.
A messiah has risen in our midst so to speak.
Then once they get in there and set up a Non-Profit - with all of the bells and whistles designed to impress the local media- they don't have the funding.
Or at least their own funding.
So many have so often received grants for one thing and then used the money for other things or worse yet put it into their own personal pockets.
It has been happening here again and again for over 30 years.
Now am I saying this is what is happening when it comes to Moose Jaw Pride?
No.
I cannot say conclusively exactly what has happened.
But at the same time the Board of that organization has turned the matter over to the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) for further investigation surrounding potential fraud.
I will be honest with you but my opinion on the outcome of any probe into what the Board has alleged to have happened, or want answers for based upon their own investigations, is in my opinion unlikely to result in criminal charges of any sort.
Moose Jaw Pride’s Rainbow Retro Thrift Store is set to close forever on September 24th - MJ Independent photo
Remember this is my personal opinion and it may be tainted with my own experiences when it comes to probes into the finances of Non-Profit Corporations here in Moose Jaw.
I can think back to over 30 years ago where an individual came riding into town preaching the good gospel of how he had the answers for people suffering with mental illness.
It was a war cry for people suffering from mental illness to set up their own organization, their own Board, their own place to be and no longer would the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) be running their lives.
They were not “consumers” as the CMHA described them but they were actually “survivors” from the services they consumed from the medical system.
The catchphrase of the day caught on and as such the newly formed group received grant funding for their project.
But instead of using it for the intended and applied for purpose, the new guru convinced his Board the money was best spent elsewhere.
There would be no drop-in centre and supports but rather the funding was diverted to establish a courier company that undercut other couriers on food deliveries way back in the day.
Of course a grant to fund a drop-in centre was misspent but the argument was the money from the business would create funds to finance a drop-in centre into perpetuity. The grant's intent would be accomplished.
But of course it didn't work out that way.
The delivery company went belly up.
In the end the person who rode into town with the answers simply rode out of town leaving more than a few people worse off than they were before.
Repeat And Spin Cycle
The reason I am telling you this is that when it comes to Non-Profits we have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again in Moose Jaw.
Grant monies and donations are put into other things and the promise to complete the project more often than not is never fulfilled.
It's a pattern that has repeated itself over and over again in Moose Jaw.
A pattern that often sees the MJPS called in but in the end no criminal charges are ever laid.
There is either in one opinion a lack of evidence while another opinion it's because the MJPS does not have a dedicated fraud investigator.
As a result in my own opinion the MJPS lacks the capabilities to precisely and accurately investigate potential complicated financial crimes involving Non-profit corporations.
Additionally there is no oversight of Non-Profit Corporation's finances by the Province.
How two Board members had to go to court to file their concerns about the Lighthouse in Saskatoon is an example of a Non-Profit Corporation allegedly going awry as the Province was not stepping in.
Other times the granting agency - the victim whose taxpayer funded grants are misspent - does not want the resultant attention and bad publicity or they don't want to see the message the group made public destroyed by the actions of a few.
It's a pattern in my opinion as reliable as the program running my Maytag washer.
It works 99 times out of 100 and on the occasional load it goes out of balance. Then you need to either balance the load or finish it in a shorter programmed wash.
I have seen this happen more than once involving Non-Profit Corporations.
Everything from animal rescues, private school, right up to someone cleaning up the homeless who then used his standing in the community where he allegedly sexually assaulted numerous local women.
The perpetrators then move on as if nothing happened and out of sight and out of mind seems to be the formula to walk away unscathed.
People can say I'm being none too kind about it, but this is simply put my opinion.
Community Whispers
With that said given what was alleged at Moose Jaw Pride's AGM on Sunday is massive and if you believe how the Board portrays it then one person is responsible for it all.
Others in the community are whispering - without any evidence to back their beliefs up - that the Board (either the present or past) should be held responsible for what has happened.
When really all we know for sure is at least 75 per cent of Moose Jaw Pride's members voted to dissolve the Non-Profit Corporation.
Liabilities Over $100,000
The dissolution is brought on by debts over $100,000 the Board claims they had no knowledge of until the beginning of August.
Here is what members of Moose Jaw Pride were told was responsible for the $100,000 debt and/or missing articles:
Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loan: $60,000
Short-term bank loan: $30,000
Outstanding Water bill: $5,600
Grant overpayment to be repaid: $3,777
Rainbow Retro unaccounted for cash: $12,024
Annual photocopier rental: $1,112
Credit card expenses: over $12,000
A van donated to the organization that cannot be found
Unknown amount owing for unpaid GST and PST on store sales
To avoid some of the personal liabilities for the Board, members of the Non-Profit voted to dissolve itself.
Under Saskatchewan law Non-Profit Corporation boards are held personally financially responsible for any debts.
So what needs to be done?
If it is all about catching and punishing any alleged perpetrator(s) as the Board indicated in my opinion the MJPS needs to perform a thorough forensic audit of Moose Jaw Pride's from Day One when they moved into Rainbow Retro.
I personally believe the MJPS needs to take a look at the overall books - from the beginning when they were truthful to now when the allegations are being made.
In my opinion the MJPS needs to establish not just when the alleged misproprieties started but how the books changed to allegedly hide it from the Board.
By doing so an investigator can in my opinion establish any patterns and if and that is a very big if, if there was in fact any financial improprieties going on.
And no I will not be sharing anything I was told many, many months ago to investigators nor the identity of my sources - sorry I'm not an agent of the police - they know better than to ask.
Is there another much larger out of town media source looking into this?
Yes there is and I can confirm I have helped them in any way I can to get to whatever the truth may be.
The big question really now is does the MJPS have the will and are willing to provide the funding to conduct a proper investigation?
Was there actually fraud here as alleged or is it a simple case of bad bookkeeping and running out of money?
These are the question any MJPS investigation needs to answer.
As for myself I don't plan to conduct any investigation, sorry, into what allegedly happened I will leave that up to the MJPS.