OTTAWA—National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations is being criticized for hiring his partner, Valerie Galley, as a senior policy adviser in his office.

“It is a conflict of interest. He admitted it was a conflict of interest and I don’t think it’s right,” Chief Ava Hill of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory said in a telephone interview Wednesday from Ohsweken, Ont.

Hill said she first learned of the hiring when she saw Galley’s name listed as a senior adviser on notes taken during his meeting with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne earlier this year.

“I am sure that Ms. Galley probably possesses the knowledge and capability to perform such a function, but the fact that she is involved in a relationship with you places her employment as your adviser in a serious conflict of interest situation,” Hill wrote in a letter to Bellegarde dated March 3 and obtained by APTN National News.

“As you well know, our people are consistently being accused of not being accountable and transparent. If the National Chief feels that he can hire his girlfriend and pay her a salary out of the AFN coffers, this would only serve to heighten the criticism that is so often levelled at our people,” Hill wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Turtle Island News, a weekly newspaper published at Six Nations.

Bellegarde responded with his own letter to say he had taken steps to mitigate what he acknowledged to be a conflict of interest.

“The AFN is following all human resource policies and practices in the hiring of all staff and the current political staff is no exception,” Bellegarde wrote in the March 27 letter, also obtained by APTN National News.

“You rightly acknowledge that there is a conflict of interest as Ms. Galley is my partner. To ensure that all administrative and human resources issues are addressed I have directed that Ms. Galley report to (AFN Chief Executive Officer Peter Dinsdale) who will be overseeing all supervisory responsibilities,” Bellegarde wrote in the letter.

An AFN official said on background that Dinsdale is responsible for approving expenses, travel and timesheets for Galley, who also worked with Bellegarde in his previous role as head of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations.

The official said this would not normally be something Dinsdale would do for political staff, who are hired at the prerogative of the chief and tend to change when a new leader is elected.

Dinsdale reports to Bellegarde and the regional chiefs who make up the executive committee of the AFN.

Neither Bellegarde nor Dinsdale were made available for an interview Wednesday and there was no official comment from the AFN.

Galley did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Hill said she was not satisfied with the response from Bellegarde.

“He admitted to me it’s a conflict of interest, but at the same time he’s saying, ‘I directed she report to the CEO.’ To me that doesn’t resolve the conflict of interest situation. Maybe to him it does,” Hill said.

The letter from Hill was discussed by the executive committee in April, where the reaction appears to have been mixed.

Bill Erasmus, the AFN regional chief for the Northwest Territories, said he did not think Bellegarde had done enough to deal with the conflict of interest.

“The problem is she’s not working for (Dinsdale). She’s advising the national chief,” Erasmus said in an interview Wednesday.

Erasmus said Bellegarde told the regional chiefs he wanted Galley to continue working for him.

“The issue is not completely over with, so we will meet with him again, and I think it’s important that she not be working there. It’s essentially against the principles and the policies that we would normally carry out,” Erasmus said.

Roger Augustine, the AFN regional chief for New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, said Bellegarde was within his right as national chief and that if the issue becomes a distraction, he trusts him to deal with it.

“If he sees that this is causing harm and is putting the regional chiefs in jeopardy and compromising the image and the respect and integrity of the office, he will assess that and he will make a decision based on those things,” Augustine said in an interview Wednesday.

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“If having someone close to him work in the office, if that is jeopardizing anything, he will make a decision and that might be to either remove her from the office, or find some other way of dealing with that issue in terms of her employment.”

Morley Googoo, the AFN regional chief for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, said he was satisfied with how Bellegarde handled things.

“We discussed it with the executive and the executive was satisfied this is not an unqualified person he was hiring. This wasn’t, ‘Here is my girlfriend, she needs a job.’ It wasn’t like that at all. She is a very qualified person. It’s really his prerogative,” Googoo said in an interview.