Any good government is going to ensure that they've taken measures to make sure that their communities being best serviced.
And you can't do that if you're not taking into account what could go wrong, and how to address the possibilities of it, and try to ensure that we don't have these things go wrong.
The risks that the leadership are looking at are very closely tied to the land and the resources.
The strength of claim and how us as staff members are implementing and following their direction.
And for management and staff, you know, we're looking after the resources that we're entrusted to do.
Well, most people don't know this, but the annual audit is, it's an external auditor coming in to look at your books.
So your books are your responsibility.
The accuracy and integrity of those numbers builds up the audit and really, they're just looking at a reasonable picture of your financial health.
But it doesn't say much about the rest of the organization.
Staff morale, risk planning, multi-year forecasting.
All those sort of details get fleshed out when you do annual planning, and they're not included in the audit.
It starts with the strategic planning where we identify key risk areas, and the council provides direction.
And in terms of policy, how to manage it, to manage that risk, and then senior management increments those policy, and request staff to corroborate in terms of avoiding any risk.
Our risk management process is, it's an annual process we revisit it every year.
When we first started this, it was a bit of a difficult task there were a lot of interviews that had to be done with staff and management and at the Chief and Council level.
We built a risk register, and then we went back and interviewed the managers to score it on the likelihood of consequence and impact.
So that quantified the risk register.
But then we also posed the question to the management: well, how do you see yourself overcoming those obstacles?
So we were putting it back on them to find solutions to the problem, and then eventually that risk register makes its way up to Chief and Council.
And they focus on the top three four five, and that has an effect on our annual budgets for the following year.
And if we've dealt with the risks, then sometimes that remains on the risk register the following year, or we strike it and we move on to the lower portion of them.
I think every First Nation faces risk when they're looking at the inherent difference between a for-profit activity versus government.
They're fundamentally different. When you're working in government, most of what you do is service-based.
How can I enrich the lives of the community around me?
And when you're working in the for-profit sector, it's more like: what can I sell to them that they'll purchase to maximize my profits?
So for us it's important that we separate the two because they're two totally different governance models.
The risk management plan protects the community members because we are examining how our staff operate in the organization, the agreements that were implementing, and the businesses that we're operating.