In a statement sent to ByBlacks.com on April 22nd Chandran Fernando said, “the current Board of Directors must be removed and replaced.”

Chandran Fernando says he has been a “dedicated supporter and investor in Black-owned organizations and initiatives across Canada and the United States for more than 25 years.” He says that he is speaking on behalf of nearly a dozen concerned members of the BBPA who have chosen to remain anonymous at this time due to fear of reprisal. 

In the statement, Fernando says “It has come to my attention that using a significant portion of its government grants, sponsor donations, and all other funding, the Board awarded contracts to companies controlled by the former President and CEO, Nadine Spencer, without appropriate due diligence. Contracts appear to have been improperly awarded to former board members, breaching BBPA's procurement and conflict of interest procedures.”

Chandran also says, “Members have petitioned the current Board to disclose all necessary documents to facilitate a comprehensive third-party financial and operational audit of the BBPA. However, our requests for this information have not been granted.”

A further statement has also been published on a newly created website called accountabilitycouncil.ca where concerned community members can sign up to learn more. 

The BBPA is one of Canada’s longest-running Black charities and arguably the most prestigious. So how did we get here, where the board is being accused of major misuse of taxpayers' money?

On March 27th, law firm Miller Thomson sent a stern letter to the board of the BBPA alleging that close to $2 million in contracts had been awarded to BBPA directors or people related to them between 2020 and 2023. Specifically $1.5 million to former CEO Nadine Spencer and her marketing company BrandEQ.

Before now, you may have only heard about the BBPA once a year when it hosts the annual Harry Jerome Awards, where it hands out awards to Canada’s most successful Black community members. Founded in 1983, the BBPA is a non-profit, charitable organization that addresses equity and opportunity for the Black community in business, employment, education, and economic development. 

Up until 2021, the structure of the organization has been a volunteer board of directors with a president. That changed three years ago when the organization created a new CEO position to be paid an annual salary. On November 5 2021 the BBPA’s President at the time, Nadine Spencer became the CEO where she was allegedly paid in the range of $250,000.

{https://www.facebook.com/thebbpa/photos/pb.100079772232162.-2207520000/6647146581992120/?type=3}

For comparison, the executive director of Tropicana Community Services, a much larger non-profit organization, earned a salary of $163,671 in 2023. 

So how could the BBPA afford a CEO with a six-figure salary?

Allegations of Misuse of Taxpayer's Money

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the global uprising against anti-Black racism, the Liberal government announced the National Ecosystem Fund on August 13, 2021. It's a $100-million program that provides funding to Black-led not-for-profit organizations to develop new services or expand those already offered, such as mentorship, networking, financial planning and business training for Black entrepreneurs.

Under this program, the BBPA received $5 million from the federal government. 

Just three months later, on November 5th, 2021, it announced the creation of a new CEO position and the employment of Nadine Spencer in this role. 

A leaked document dating back to July 18, 2021 (while Nadine Spencer still held the President position) shows a scathing auditor's report highlighting numerous red flags at the BBPA regarding payments to “related parties.” 

In accounting terms, board directors (and anyone related to them) are known as “related parties.” Ontario’s charities and non-profit law states, “A director or trustee should not conduct business with the charity.” 

The auditor’s Related Parties Transactions Report found $187,503 in transactions between Nadine Spencer’s marketing company BrandEQ and the BBPA between 2020 and 2021. And just to clarify, that is outside of the compensation she would receive as the CEO. It also found a total of $64,930 paid to Nadine Spencer herself from the BBPA. 

According to the auditor’s Related Parties Transactions Report, the BBPA hired its own President’s company (BrandEQ) and also paid Nadine Spencer “in the execution of BBPA programs and events, for example BAIDS, Boss Women, Harry Jerome.” 

Nadine Spencer has not responded to our request for an interview.

But there’s more. 

The auditor’s report also suggested that the board of directors at the time was complicit, as they approved some of these transactions. Anyone who was a board member during the relevant period could be liable to repay these funds. The Miller Thompson lawyer’s letter warns, "Where directors of a registered charity have been found to have failed to comply with the requirements of the CCA, they may be found in breach of their fiduciary duties and held liable to repay the funds in question.”

But there were also times when Spencer acted without the board's permission. According to the auditor’s report, “Our review of the transactions noted one instance where despite having no permission from the Board, BrandEQ conducted a survey on behalf of the BBPA and was paid $5,000 for it.”

The auditors questioned the board about paying their own President and her company. The board provided two reasons, which were referenced in the report: 

a) The organization had a limited time to get the programs in place and wanted to ensure that they were conducted with the highest level of professionalism and efficiency, so that future funding would not be jeopardized. They felt that BrandEQ, which is a well-known marketing firm, fit the requirements, and was likely to better execute in line with the organization’s immediate needs rather than another firm.

b) The President had donated a significant amount of her company’s resources to the BBPA in earlier times when the organization’s resources were lean, and so the Board felt that it was fitting to compensate BrandEQ, now that the BBPA was in a position to do so.

The Miller Thomson lawyer's letter states that the Income Tax Act, “requires that BBPA, as a registered charity, does not use its resources in a manner that confers a private benefit to a non-qualified donee. As a for-profit corporation, BrandEQ is a non-qualified donee. The quantum of the contracts awarded in such a short period of time raises concerns as to whether the services rendered by BrandEQ were provided at fair market value and whether the board conducted the appropriate due diligence to provide it with comfort that the payments were fair and reasonable.”

Yet, in an email on Thursday, March 21, 2024, addressed to BBPA members, chair of the board Ross Cadastre doubled down on hiring BrandEQ saying, “Engaging BrandEQ without an RFP process was driven by urgent needs at the time, including executing the Harry Jerome gala event.” 

It is curious that the 42nd Harry Jerome Awards would be considered an urgent need when it is an annual event that is planned every year in advance. Why would there suddenly be any urgency for a yearly event? There does not appear to be a justifiable reason for the CEO’s company to be handed lucrative contracts without any kind of competitive bid. 

The Miller Thompson lawyer’s letter sent to BBPA underscores this, saying:

“It would not be difficult to prove that there are many talented Black-owned marketing and PR firms across Canada that could have been considered for contracts with BBPA. With an estimated 7,000-10,000 such businesses nationwide, awarding contracts to BrandEQ, a company owned by a board director and then continuing such contracts for 3 years while Ms. Spencer served as the CEO, raises concerns about whether an objective and impartial process was followed. Prioritizing one firm over so many others undermines the public perception of fairness and equal opportunity that BBPA aims to uphold.”

Particularly when the government funding was purposed for Black entrepreneurship. 

The Miller Thomson letter also states, “...during 2020, while Ms. Spencer was a director of BBPA, BrandEQ, Roderick Brereton and Michael Pinnock, who were also on the board at that time, received payments for services rendered to BBPA.”

Michael Pinnock was the treasurer of the BBPA in 2021. The 2021 auditor’s report says “We identified a total of $1,700 in transactions between Michael Pinnock and the BBPA. The transactions related to the execution of the BBPA programs Boss Women and Little Jamaica.” 

And again, according to Ontario’s charities and non-profit law: “A director or trustee should not conduct business with the charity.” 

The 2021 auditor’s report also showed a total of $157,455 in transactions between the BBPA and Roderick Brereton, the founder of Urban Rez Solutions, described as a social change/conflict management consultancy. In this case, while Brereton was a board member, he was paid to manage a BBPA financial literacy program. The program was funded by donations from Starbucks and The Donald Reid Foundation, consisting of: 8 financial literacy videos to be posted on the BBPA website, and 24 financial literacy sessions, each running 2 hours. 

According to the 2021 auditor’s report, Brereton initially quoted $50,000 as his fee but later increased it to $83,000, and the board approved it. But it appears some of the work was simply never turned in. The report states, “There was no evidence of the 8 Financial Literacy training videos on the BBPA website.” The 24 sessions were conducted but they lasted 90 minutes each instead of 2 hours. Urban Rez was also supposed to hand in an impact report to the BBPA, and according to the auditor’s report, that never materialized either. 

In a statement sent to ByBlacks.com (after this article was published), Brereton says, "We conducted programs over the course of the pandemic (2 years in succession) where over 150 young Black entrepreneurs were paid an honorarium monthly as per the Transfer Payment Agreement. In addition the $83,000 in question was used to bring young Black entrepreneurs from across the country to the Michaëlle Jean Black summit in Halifax (flights, rooms, food etc.)."

Nadine Spencer allegedly continued to receive lucrative contracts in the subsequent years, 2022, and 2023, with her marketing company BrandEQ being hired three years in a row to market the Harry Jerome Awards. 

In an email to all BBPA members that went out on March 21 2024 chair of the BBPA Ross Cadastre said, “When Ms. Spencer later assumed her role as interim BBPA CEO (the BrandEQ contract was not renewed beyond March 2023, and Ms. Spencer’s contract ended in November 2023).”

Fast forward one year later, all of this came to a head at the BBPA’s annual general meeting on March 7, 2024. The meeting was derailed when one member questioned the Chair of the BBPA, Ross Cadastre about the payments to Nadine Spencer’s company BrandEQ. The next day, this member and several others had their BBPA memberships summarily cancelled. 

In the same email that went out to all members of the BBPA on March 21 2024, Cadastre says the timing of the cancellations was a mere coincidence, and that these memberships existed under a sponsored program by Purolator, which no longer exists. The member shot back via email, accusing the board of trying to silence them. 

Interestingly, while announcements and minutes from past annual general meetings are posted on the BBPA’s website, at the time of publishing we could not find any minutes of this most recent annual general meeting on the BBPA’s website.

Cadastre declined our interview request and his publicist Erin Richards sent this quote on his behalf via email, “We want to assure you that the BBPA Board takes seriously its responsibility to act in the best interests of the organization, and it categorically denies the allegations of misappropriation of funds. Claims by the member were taken seriously by the BBPA Board, leading us to review the particulars with board directors, our treasurer, our auditors and with our legal counsel. No evidence of wrongdoing was found. This is an ongoing legal matter, and no further comment can be made at this time."

Mere weeks after that annual general meeting on March 7, 2024, the newly installed CEO of the BBPA, Lianne Hannaway, parted ways with the charity, just 59 days after she took the job. She wrote on LinkedIn that "the current operations made it such that the Board and I could not agree on how to move forward given recent member concerns.”

Hannaway declined our interview request on the advice of her lawyer. 

Now, not only is the BBPA without a leader, but it is embroiled in a messy legal standoff and facing serious allegations of misuse of public funds.

Moreover, the daughter of Harry Jerome, the decorated Black Canadian Olympian after whom the BBPA’s annual awards gala is named, is worried about the impact all of this controversy will have on her father’s legacy. She's sent a cease-and-desist letter asking them to stop using her father's name until they are cleared of these allegations.

In a telephone interview, Debbie Jerome-Smith told ByBlacks.com, “If the allegations are true, I feel saddened my father’s name is attached.” Jerome-Smith went on to say, “The only reason I go is because it's my father's name. But my dad would have hated this. The awards used to be about a good thing and now it’s all about their political agenda.”

OPINION: What Can We Learn From All This?

Since the horrific George Floyd event — in a cry for justice and racial equity, governments, corporations, institutions, and organizations have gotten caught up in an emotional and reactionary state and have decided just to throw money at the problem. While this looks like a genuine act on the surface, it’s essentially a political move to quiet Black folks down. But it's a talk more and do nothing culture. “Black entrepreneurship” is now grotesquely being misled away from how entrepreneurship works in the real world, to a contrived nonsensical construct.

We now have a constant ‘look-at-me’ show played out on social media, of self-declared and incapable ‘leaders’ building nonprofit organizations to focus on entrepreneurship. These leaders, seeing a government-funded gold rush, have perfected the art of begging them, and the banks, too, for money to sustain their newly created jobs. 

Welcome to the new era of the fake nonprofit elite.

So-called Black leadership has turned into an announcement culture, with no accountability and responsibility, and no shame. A social media “Likes” culture is more about showing off rather than doing anything meaningful and measurable. 

So when the Government of Canada and the Canadian banks announced it was giving out hundreds of millions to Black organizations to fight “Anti-Black Racism,” you knew a new problem was on the horizon. When that money is being given to others to manage on their behalf, things usually won’t end well. 

This doesn’t mean that government grants can’t be helpful, but when they are given to others who stand to gain financially, the organization becomes one mainly to support the financial needs of those running it. 

For all the money multinationals and United Nations-type organizations spend annually on international development, the Caribbean, for example, has not experienced a single meaningful or sustainable economic growth benefit for its people. About 50% of the funding is eaten up by the Western consulting industry, intermediaries, and advisors. 

Top-down development doesn't work! The scholarship work and continued discourse have shown us that. 

With files from Camille Dundas.

Cover photo courtesy of depositphotos.com

Updates:

This story has been updated with additional comments from Roderick Brereton on April 25th at 15:50.