Council changes up portfolios

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) announced that the portfolios of certain Council chiefs have been adjusted following a review - although none were made in terms of changing leads.

David Diabo is no longer on the heritage file, Ryan Montour is no longer on sustainable development, Ross Montour was added to lands and development, and grand chief Cody Diabo switched from health to governance.

Although he characterized the changes as “minor,” the review and the changes are still important internally and externally for the Council.

“It’s important in terms of not only accountability to the community, to show people what people are working on, but internally as well because you have staff that need direction on things,” said Cody.

He said that having this review a little less than a year after this Council was elected was a matter of timeliness.

“I don’t want to wait too long, and I know that in the past, just because of by-elections and stuff like that, you’re kind of a little bit past halfway through the term. And, really, you’re spending a year-and-a-half maybe in a portfolio that you don’t need to be there, or just have too many portfolios,” said Cody.

He switched from health to governance for those reasons.

“I had jumped on health at the beginning of the term to help out Arnold (Boyer), because nobody else was jumping on it,” said the grand chief.

But, his role as grand chief aligned better with the governance portfolio, leading to the switch.

Ryan Montour was in a similar position, as a large workload as lead on public safety along with being on four other files than sustainable development led to him dropping the file.

“I have fairly large files; the public safety portfolio has a lot of different files under it,” said Ryan.

That includes things like the clean soil policy, the Sanitary Conditions Law, housing, the ongoing efforts to make Route 207 safer, and more.

He said that his responsibilities on the file were for things like greenhouses, which organizations in town outside the MCK have been developing on their own.

“I felt that it was definitely a change that I could do to alleviate some of the workload. I wasn’t really being a productive member of my portfolio, so I decided to lighten my load to concentrate on other things,” said Ryan.

David, for his part, dropped the heritage portfolio in part because of his added workload from his addition on the duty-to-consult file and because of a relative lack of action in the tourism file.

“It was just getting to be too much,” said David.

“Everybody wants to be on stuff, but you can really start seeing your workload and where your attention is needed, or your interest as well,” said Cody.

David echoed the grand chief’s thoughts.

“It’s important, if not critical. Once we get a good feel for the work that we’re doing after being elected, it’s easy to assess where your efforts are needed most, and where they’re having the most impact,” he said.

The changes came into effect following the May 26 council meeting.

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