Mayor Mike Natomagan at a New North meeting on June 22. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.
The mayor of the northern Saskatchewan community of Pinehouse says the community has nothing to hide about its finances.
Mike Natomagan was somewhat surprised and perplexed to learn the province’s privacy commissioner cited the community seven times in his latest report for failing to even respond to freedom of information requests from his office.
Natomagan says he has a limited staff, and it was impossible to meet the complex requests for information within a short period of time. He says there is nothing to hide, and he can’t understand why the community of 1,500 seems to be a target.
Natomagan says the village holds two public meetings a year, where residents can look at the books. He adds there are many more important issues to deal with, including crime and building a local economy.
“The whole community is trying to do something positive,” he said. “We are moving up, we are creating our independence to do our own thing, now it’s wrong.”
A number of the information requests asked for the finances of the village’s business development corporation, Pinehouse Business North.
The mayor says that information is confidential for competitive reasons. He says he has a legal opinion to back that up.
One of those trying to get that information is freelance journalist, D’Arcy Hande. He lives in Saskatoon, but says there are residents of the community that also want to know what’s going on.
“We know there is weird stuff going on,” he said. “But we can’t get documents to substantiate it.”
Hande represents a group called Pinehouse.info, a group Mayor Natomagan has no use for.