Every Child Matters - The Horrifying Story Continues

751 unmarked graves found at a now defunct Catholic residential school site in Cowessess in southeastern Saskatchewan province.

This discovery is the most significant and substantial till date in Canada. A grim reminder of years of abuse and prejudice indigenous communities have suffered in Canada as they continue to fight for justice and better living conditions

The church that ran the school removed the headstones.

It comes soon after the remains of 215 children were found at another residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. It focuses on Canada's past policies of forced assimilation. 

The Marieval Indian Residential School operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1899 to 1997. It is unclear if the remains are linked to the school and unmarked graves belong to children. Technical teams will provide a verified number and identify the remains.

The school was founded in 1890s by Catholic missionaries. The federal government began funding the school in 1901 and took over administration in 1969 before turning it over to Cowessess First Nation in 1987. It closed in the 1990s and later demolished.

It was one of the 130 plus compulsory boarding schools funded by Canadian government and run by religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries to assimilate indigenous youth.

6,000 children died in these schools due to filthy health and living conditions inside. 

This is the truth about Canada's cultural genocide. Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school authorities led others to run away.

Cowessess began to use ground penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves at the cemetery of the school. The announcement marked the first phase of the search efforts.

Cowessess First Nation hopes the church will work with them in investigating further.

This is a shameful reminder of Canada's systemic racism, discrimination and injustice that Indigenous peoples have faced.

What are residential schools?

Between 1863 and 1998, 1,50,000 plus indigenous children were taken from their families and put in these schools throughout Canada.

They were not allowed to speak their language or practise their culture and were mistreated and abused.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that indigenous children never returned to their home communities. The commission's landmark report said the practice amounted to cultural genocide. 

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologised for the system.

The Roman Catholic church responsible for the operations of 70% residential schools is yet to issue a formal apology.

The Kamloops discovery reopened old wounds in Canada about the lack of information and accountability around the residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families and subjected them to malnutrition, physical and sexual abuse.

Sucheta Dalal

Among the best known financial journalists in India, in 2006, Ms Dalal was awarded the Padma Shri, India government’s third highest civilian award, based on her outstanding investigative journalism since the early 1990s.

Her 35 years of investigative reporting spans the Harshad Mehta scam, CR Bhansali scam, and expose of Enron among others. She was the Financial Editor at The Times of India and has also written for Business Standard, The Economic Times, Indian Express and Financial Express among others.

She served as a member of SEBI’s primary market advisory committee, the Narayana Murthy Corporate Governance Committee and as a member of Investor Education and the Protection Fund of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs .

She has co-authored the best-selling book ‘The Scam: From Harshad Mehta to Ketan Parekh’ and a biography of A D Shroff, a Titan of Finance.

P.S. Her writing is one of the major reasons that has influenced my liking for current business affairs. Then came the stage of obsession. And now it's more of a passion. Many of my students and well wishers say that I've made it into a subject.

What is The Way Forward for CAs in India

I will give below some important exchanges of thoughts with two other very respectable CAs in the profession about Satyam, Big Four and our profession. 

Satyam - The irony about Satyam was S Gopalakrishnan, Partner, PwC, ex-Lovelock & Lewes, Hyderabad, the man who signed the Satyam annual reports till 2008, and who was held responsible was a member of ICAI AASB (ICAI - Auditing &  Assurance Standards Board). And he was considered to be big audit quality. A lot of lessons need to be learnt from IL&FS too. I think it is bigger than Satyam.
 
Joint Audit - Joint Audit not only of banks but in other organizations is required for transparency and independence. This will increase professional opportunities and overall fees too.
 
But will it stop another PNB scam? There were eight joint auditors. But in spite of that Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi made a fool of everybody. Bypassed the system through SWIFT. Looted the bank in crores and crores of unearned income. And escaped to London and Antigua (now Dominica). Could we do anything? 
 
ICAI Regulations - The problem is with some ICAI regulations which have never been touched. 
 
ICAI cannot punish a firm ever. End of the story. That rule has not been changed even after Satyam when SEBI had to come in after a long time and punish. But it's still lying in court. 
 
A member can be punished. An easy thing to do. But never the firm. This is the root of the problem.
 
But there has to be enough room for ICAI, now NFRA, when the firm has to be punished. IL&FS is the biggest scam - corruption - greed case ever. Rs 1 lakh cr. So don't you think KPMG and Deloitte need to be hauled up? 
 
NFRA has punished Deloitte's managing partner, Udayan Sen. But is that enough? What about the firm? Check up what's happening against the Big Four in the UK and China. And how they have cleaned up the mess.

The UK has changed the regulator. And scrapped the old one. Financial Reporting Council. FRC. The Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority is a proposed audit regulator intended to be established in the United Kingdom to replace the Financial Reporting Council.
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For an act of one person should an entire firm be banned? A firm can set up process and procedures...but no one can control human being. For this reason, the definition of Asset uses the word Control. For one corrupt minister you don't pull down the entire government. There should be process and justice delivery should be time bound. The US sets a good example. It is not that in the US partners in firms are not corrupt. I suggest and support a strong system.
 
There should be thorough investigation of the process of Deloitte or KPMG. Firms should be punished for shortfall in their process, not for individual partners taking calls.

Every Child Matters

Every Child Matters

Why so many children died at Indian residential schools.

It’s time for Canada to get up from its slumber and recognize these are children. It’s time to come together as a nation and hold accountable those who hurt them.

These children were taken away from their families, their culture, their lands - never to return home again. This discovery is a painful reminder of the legacy of the residential school system in Canada,

Unmarked and previously forgotten graves. An unthinkable loss spoken about but never documented. Many of Canada’s most notorious residential schools sit amid sprawling cemeteries of unmarked children’s graves. But a true figure will never be known as death records – if they were kept at all – were often lacking even basic personal information.

The deadliest years for Indian Residential Schools were from the 1870s to the 1920s. Kuper Island Residential School, located near Chemainus, British Columbia, saw the deaths of nearly one third of its student population in the years following its opening in 1889. The school would come to be nicknamed Alcatraz for its remote location and appalling conditions.

Call to examine St. Paul's Indian Residential school site after children's graves found in Kamloops.

Call to examine St. Paul's Indian Residential school site after children's graves found in Kamloops