A former golf course north of Winnipeg purchased with money Peguis First Nation received as reparation for broken treaty promises is now mostly in the hands of a property developer who used to advise the band and its real estate trust.
The band’s lawyer said the transfer of ownership is unfair, and an independent legal expert called it unusual — while the former chair of the Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust said mounting financial pressure left the trust with no other choice but to undertake the transaction.
“This was the only solution we could have had,” said Greg Stevenson, the trust’s former chair.
Andrew Marquess, the developer who now controls most of the land, meanwhile, said the deal allows the Peguis real estate trust to recoup its initial investment, retain the control of some of the land and be free of any associated debt.
On Nov. 22, 2024, Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust sold 75 per cent of a company that controls the former Meadows Golf Course in East St. Paul to a numbered company owned by Marquess, according to a purchase and development agreement obtained by CBC News.
Marquess, who is best known as the owner of the Parker lands in Winnipeg, earned at least $4.4 million as an adviser to Peguis and its real estate trust between April 2021 and March 2023, according to a list of payments provided to CBC News by the band’s chief and council, as well as financial records obtained by CBC News.
The trust originally purchased the 73-hectare (181-acre) Meadows property in 2021 using $10 million of treaty land entitlement funds — money Canada provided to Peguis to settle the federal government’s historic land debt to the First Nation.
The trust also took out a $5.5-million loan from a numbered company owned by Maureen Diamond, who is married to Marquess, to cover the rest of the sale as well as initial development costs, according to court documents.
The interest rate on the loan from Diamond’s company was initially 5.75 per cent and was later increased to 9.18 per cent, according to court documents.
By mid-October 2024, the real estate trust ended up defaulting on principal and interest payments on that loan to the tune of $5.6 million, according to the Meadows purchase and development agreement, which was first reported by the media outlet Terra Indigena.
According to the agreement, the real estate trust sold 75 per cent of the company that owns the Meadows land to a Marquess-controlled company in exchange for his promise to pay the trust $10 million over a period of up to seven years.
Marquess’s company must also pay interest on the $10 million at a rate equal to the Bank of Canada bond benchmark on the day the transaction closed, the agreement stated. That interest rate was 3.29 per cent at the time of the agreement, according to Bank of Canada statistics.
The deal leaves Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust in control of 6.3 hectares (roughly 16 acres) of the Meadows, allowing it to retain control over a daycare the province paid for on the northwestern edge of the land and another strip of land to the south.
Marquess would be free to develop most of the remainder of the land into a residential neighbourhood, with 2,129 housing units made of single-family homes, rowhouses and multi-family buildings, according to the purchase and development agreement.
While the Rural Municipality of East St. Paul has placed a moratorium on new development, a new planning framework for the broader area east of Highway 59 would allow for the construction of thousands of new residential units and some commercial development, once water and sewer service is available.
The agreement also grants Marquess control over the development process and states a numbered company will control a geothermal heating installation for the development, which was partly funded in 2022 by an $880,000 federal grant intended for Indigenous-owned or Indigenous-led projects.
That numbered company, which listed the real estate trust’s law firm as its mailing address, was dissolved in June 2025, according to corporate records.
‘History repeating itself’: Peguis lawyer
In September 2024, Peguis First Nation sued Marquess over allegations he failed to act in the best interests of the band and financially benefited from breaches of duty while he worked for the First Nation and its trust.
John Gailus, a lawyer who represents Peguis, said the agreement to sell the Meadows “came as a complete surprise” to the First Nation, given that it happened while Peguis is engaged in litigation against Marquess.
“What’s particularly galling about this is this transaction took place after the litigation had been filed,” Gailus said in an interview.
“I don’t know the reasons why the [real estate trust’s] trustees felt they needed to do this sale or what the motivations were behind it, but it doesn’t appear to me to be a fair transaction.”
Gailus suggested the transaction is the latest example of a First Nation losing land.
“It seems to be another example of history repeating itself,” he said.
“In this case, we’ve got a developer coming in saying, ‘I’m gonna make you guys millions of dollars, we’ll get this money from the TLE [treaty land entitlement] trust and develop this land,'” but then “ends up with the land in the name of his numbered company,” said Gailus.
The treaty land entitlement trust was set up to fulfil Canada’s outstanding treaty obligation to provide reserve lands for Peguis First Nation, said Gailus.
That money, he said, was intended only for two specific purposes: to buy land to add to the band’s reserve or to create a new reserve.
Now the trust no longer controls the land — and won’t be compensated any time soon, he said.
“It’s pretty galling that [under the agreement] they have to wait seven years, potentially, to get those monies back at the lowest, lowest level of interest.”
In a statement, Marquess lawyer Kevin Toyne said the Meadows transaction allows Peguis to receive its initial investment back, retain ownership of a portion of the Meadows land, and be free of any debt on that land, as well as the responsibility for any servicing costs, once East St. Paul lifts its moratorium on development.
“Andrew’s company has assumed all debt as well as all development risk,” Toyne wrote in the statement.
He also rejected the notion there is anything unusual about the Meadows sale.
“The structure of the transaction and the transaction documents are consistent with commercial real estate transactions in Manitoba,” Toyne said in the statement.
Trust had no other option: former chair
Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust is an arm’s-length entity that manages off-reserve real estate assets for Peguis. It’s run by trustees who were initially appointed, but are now elected by members of the band.
Greg Stevenson, the former chair of the real estate trust, said he tried to keep the Meadows in First Nations hands but was prevented in doing so by Peguis Chief Stan Bird.
“We looked at other First Nations to buy this land, because we wanted to keep it within First Nations, and they were being stopped,” Stevenson said in an interview in late October.
In an August 2024 letter to Bird and other members of the Peguis band council, provided to CBC News by Toyne, Stevenson and other trustees said the chief opposed the sale of the Meadows land to Swan Lake First Nation.
Swan Lake Chief Jason Daniels did not respond to requests for comment.
In that letter, Stevenson also said Bird told the RM of East St. Paul that the real estate trust lacked the confidence of the band’s chief and council.
Stevenson said in an interview the Peguis chief also ordered the trust to stop working on behalf of the band. This made it difficult to find lenders and work with municipal officials, Stevenson said, claiming Bird worked behind the scenes to stop the trust from developing the Meadows land.
In correspondence provided by Peguis lawyer Gailus, Bird told Stevenson and his fellow trustees they were responsible for managing the Meadows property on behalf of the band and “must do so with the appropriate level of care and diligence.”
Bird accused Stevenson and the other trustees of “attempting to shift blame and responsibility” for the Meadows file on to the band’s chief and council.
Regardless, Stevenson said the trust had no other option but to enter into the agreement with Marquess.
“We were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Stevenson said in an interview in October, stating the trust could not find new lenders to cover its debt to the company owned by Maureen Diamond, Marquess’s wife.
“Nobody was going to touch us with a 10-foot pole. So we were running out of time. We had no time to negotiate, nothing.”
‘If everything fell apart, everybody loses’
Diamond’s company issued a default notice to Peguis First Nation Real Estate on Nov. 7, 2024, according to the purchase and development agreement on the Meadows transaction, which was completed two weeks later.
Adding to the urgency, Stevenson said, was a pending foreclosure on the Meadows land by Canadian Western Bank.
“When that happens, Peguis loses the entire thing on pennies on the dollar,” he said. “If everything fell apart, everybody loses — especially Peguis, because Peguis used $10 million of their [treaty land entitlement] money.”
Marquess suggested this was incorrect. In a statement in November, the developer said the loan from Canadian Western Bank came due in August 2024, and that he met with Peguis councillors and the band’s chief financial officer prior to the loan’s maturation.
Marquess also said in his statement that Canadian Western Bank “did not threaten or take steps to foreclose on its loan” to Diamond’s numbered company.
In his 2023 report to Peguis’s chief and council, Marquess described this company as “a related company of mine.”
A former golf course north of Winnipeg purchased with money Peguis First Nation received as reparation for broken treaty promises is now mostly in the hands of a property developer who used to advise the band and its real estate trust.
Marquess told the band in that report he involved Canadian Western Bank in the Peguis real estate trust’s original purchase of the Meadows partly “to create a banking relationship with a chartered bank” for the trust.
The Canadian Western Bank loan to his wife’s company, he said in his report to the band, carries “significant reputational risk for myself” with the bank.
“If the loan appears to be in jeopardy for any reason,” his wife’s company would demand repayment, he warned.
Several weeks before the bank’s loan was about to come due, in July 2024, Stevenson told Peguis First Nation’s chief financial officer that the banking relationship envisioned by Marquess did not materialize.
“We never had a relationship with them, this was always Andrew’s contact,” Stevenson wrote in an email, telling the Peguis CFO the real estate trust could not take over the loan from Diamond’s company due to factors that included Bird’s opposition to the trust as well as the trust’s lack of expertise.
“We have no development experience,” he said in the email, provided to CBC News by Toyne, the lawyer for Marquess.
During the court proceedings launched by Peguis against Marquess, Diamond said under cross-examination that she formed her numbered company to lend money to Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust.
Peguis was unsuccessful in obtaining financing elsewhere, she said in an affidavit filed in the same civil case.
Diamond said she had never lent money to any other company. She declined to answer questions about discussions she had with her husband about the financing arrangement, citing spousal privilege, according to the transcript of her cross-examination.
Diamond declined a CBC News request for further comment.
Peguis lawyer Gailus questioned why Diamond’s company was chosen as a lender.
“You’ve got a property, you’ve got $10 million equity in it. You could go down to the Bank of Montreal [and] I feel pretty confident that they’d be more than happy to give you a mortgage,” he said.
Harold (Sonny) Cochrane, the lawyer for the new trustees of the Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust, did not respond to requests for comment on the sale of the Meadows land.
‘Not standard practice’: legal expert
Peguis lawyer Gailus also noted Marquess is subject to a much lower interest rate for his promise to purchase the Meadows land than the rate Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust had to pay the company owned by Diamond, Marquess’s wife.
Gailus also said the use of a promissory note — effectively, a promise to pay in the future — is puzzling.
“One would expect if … you’re doing a transaction for $10 million, you’d have more than simply a promissory note to back it up — that there’d be some sort of mortgage or a credit agreement or some sort of a personal property security registry, or something like that.”
Stevenson, the former chair of the real estate trust, said the promissory note is a guarantee that Peguis will get its money back.
“They’re not going to lose anything, except for the land, because … we can’t do anything with it,” Stevenson said.
Marquess lawyer Toyne said a mortgage will be placed on the Meadows title once the conditions of the sale and development agreement have been met.
Gailus also said he is concerned the purchase and development agreement places Peguis toward the back line of lenders who would be repaid if Marquess is unable to do so.
“It is odd that in this case we’ve got the lender — effectively Peguis through the real estate trust —saying, ‘Well, we’ll just subordinate our interest. We’ll go back to second in line,'” Gailus said.
CBC News asked Yvan Guy Larocque, a Winnipeg lawyer with expertise in Indigenous governance and economic development, to review the Meadows purchase and development agreement.
He said it is odd to see a band adviser so financially involved with their client.
“The dealings between Marquess and his wife’s company and the trust and the nation’s endeavours is odd, and it’s not standard practice,” said Larocque, a founding partner of Hall & Larocque LLP and a member of the University of Manitoba’s law faculty.
Larocque also commented on the First Nation trust’s decision to part with land purchased using funds intended to repay a historic land debt.
“These treaty land entitlement lands being essentially transferred to a non-Indigenous party defeats the purpose of the treaty land entitlement process, in my mind,” he said.
Larocque also questioned the decision to provide Marquess with control over the entire development process.
“In this case, essentially the Nation’s put in the back seat,” he said.
“They’re not going to have control of this project, and they’re agreeing in advance to sign off on anything that the developer needs to move the project forward, which is something that I wouldn’t advise a client to do.”
CBC News also asked Toronto-based lawyer Corey Shefman, a partner at OKT LLP who specializes in Indigenous governance, to review the sale agreement.
“As a lawyer who represents First Nations across the country in similar sorts of arrangements, there are several unusual features of this agreement that give me pause,” Shefman said.
Peguis lawyer Gailus compared the agreement between the real estate trust and Marquess to “an onion,” with “all these different layers and numbered companies.”
Any lawyer who looks at the agreement would wonder what the seller is getting out of it, he said.
“How did this take place?” Gailus asked. “Ten million dollars was supposed to go to purchase lands — much-needed lands that we need for housing.”
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