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A First Nations advocate is turning to the police in hopes of prompting an investigation into the tens of millions of dollars in ineligible and unsupported funding by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) flagged by Ottawa for repayment.
Rob Louie, founder and president of the Band Member Alliance and Advocacy Association of Canada (BMAAAC), said he delivered the letter from Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) to FSIN seeking repayment of $28.7 million to the Saskatoon police on Monday morning.
“What I hope to see is criminal charges being laid against those responsible,” Louie told Global News in an interview.
This letter, originally shared with the public by Louie, details spending lines from April 2019 to March 2024, as flagged in a KPMG financial audit conducted last fall.
In the audit, $47 million in transactions were reviewed by Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) – of those, $34.2 million were determined to be used in “ineligible, questionable and unsupported” ways.
Saskatoon police told Global News they are not investigating.
“Any complaint in relation to this deemed credible by the SPS Criminal Investigations Bureau will be forwarded to RCMP Federal Policing,” police said.
Global News has reached out to the federal RCMP for comment, but has yet to receive confirmation of the investigation.
“Quite frankly, we don’t care if it’s the Saskatoon police or the RCMP that’s going to carry out criminal charges. We just want that to be done,” said Louie.
The FSIN continues to reject that the audit reflects a misuse of funds, saying last Tuesday that it is instead a “fundamental disagreement in interpretation” applied “retroactively and without a full and proper consideration of the facts.”
The largest disputed line remains COVID-19-related expenditures, totalling more than $23.2 million. The ISC said in its letter that this spending line was largely due to a lack of documentation to validate purchases of personal protective equipment, along with their delivery and distribution to First Nations.
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FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron has previously said a majority of the 74 First Nations chiefs his organization represents supported the handling of those deliveries.
On Monday, the FSIN shared on Facebook dozens of photos of spreadsheets of what it says are personal protective equipment (PPE) shipments to each member nation.
“Many of them, over 40, close to 50, have signed support letters, affidavits, statements about the PPE deliveries, because that’s another narrative, that no First Nations received PPE,” Cameron said at a news conference last week.
Global News asked the FSIN to see the support letters. Instead, the organization sent a sample letter template addressed to Rebecca Alty, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Mandy Gull-Masty, Minister of Indigenous Services of Canada.
In the template, blank spaces are provided for chiefs to fill in their respective First Nation’s names and the amount of PPE received.
Global News has verified that some chiefs received these affidavit requests from the FSIN via email two weeks before the ISC repayment letter was leaked to the public.
“Our seven chiefs have not signed this letter because when you listen to Canada and ISC, what they’re looking for is receipts,” said Mark Arcand, tribal chief of Saskatoon Tribal Council.
In a news release on Tuesday, the FSIN is again responding to critics, saying it disputes any “selective” or “misleading” parts of ongoing discussions with ISC, a process it says “remains active.”
“These representations are disputed by the FSIN and will be addressed through the appropriate channels,” the statement read.
Last week, Louie’s organization penned an open letter to the FSIN.
“We believe in fairness. There is still time for you to make things right. The federal government is not the problem; the accounting firm that carried out the forensic audit is not the problem; and white people are not the problem. The problem is that somewhere along the way, a culture of entitlement was created that needs to be rooted out of FSIN immediately,” BMAAAC’s letter from last Wednesday reads.
“(Louie) has made numerous false and defamatory remarks about staff and First Nations leadership across Saskatchewan,” the FSIN wrote in a press release responding to the BMAAAC and other critics on Monday.
“His lack of credibility and history on the wrong side of the law makes his expertise questionable and we look forward to hearing from the actual experts,” it continues.
Responding to this allegation of defamation, Louie said he would use the “defence of truth.”
“The FSIN response is really a canned speech that’s been used. It’s an old, tired line that if they try to silence First Nations people like me, they’ll say it’s defamation. What I provided is not defamation, and if it was, there is something called the defence of the truth,” said Louie.
“The truth of the matter is I’m working off of the information provided to me, including the Indigenous Services Canada forensic audit report, and what FSIN is doing is textbook deflection,” he added.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
