Feeding At The Trough

"We are not trying to unfairly expose anyone, but focus attention on some numbers that deserve a second look. I think people will be surprised by the figures."
"The new transparency law is to empower the grassroots with information that can help them hold their leaders accountable."
Colin Craig, Prairie director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation

When the federal government's new Financial Transparency Act was brought into law, a world of surprises awaited the rank and file of the hundreds of Canadian aboriginal reserves. All their queries whose responses were never before forthcoming revolving around the manner in which their elected chiefs and councillors allocated the funding awarded them by the federal government through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, will now be answered.

The revelations are rather unsavoury, but perhaps not totally unexpected. Aboriginal chiefs are well known to consider themselves exceptionally entitled, and rumours have long gone the rounds of their spendthrift allocations on expense claims, lavish travel expenses and personal entitlements. Now, those rumours, through the newly-enacted transparency act have been validated. Much to the chagrin of those in receipt of excessive remuneration, and the ire of those whose own needs have been neglected on those same reserves.

On all too many reserves the fundamentals of utilizing federal annual government funding have not gone where it is assumed they should; reserve municipal-type infrastructure, policing, fire protection, education, medical facilities, employment; in short all the vital indices required for communities to be self-reliant and self-fulfilled. It's human nature, however, when one's own labour is not the generating factor of funding, to abuse that funding, and too many reserves have become skilled at that abuse.

A list of abusers was compiled by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and it is hugely instructive on the extent and level of inexcusable manipulation of band funds to enrich their overseers. Chiefs' salaries are tax-free, and it is plain to see from the data provided as required by law, remuneration levels far outstrip salaries received by mayors of non-native towns and cities across the country. For example, a chief in Manitoba representing a reserve of 40 souls earning $185,000.

The mayor of Brandon, Manitoba, with a population of 46,000 people, earns half that figure. This is Chief John Thunder, of Buffalo Point, four decades the chief of his 40-person reserve, taking in the taxed-world equivalent of $185,000. Oh, and an additional $12,000 in expenses filed for last year, while Mayor Shari Dector Hirst of Brandon earned $95,000.

Chief Kelly LaRocca of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation in Ontario earned the off-reserve equivalent of $159,000 in 2013, double the $65,000 salary of the mayor of North Bay whose population is 53,651. In Chief LaRocca's band, 47 people lived on the reserve in a band of 226. Head of the Cheslatta Carrier representing 147 people living on the reserve earned the equivalent of $185,000 (tax-free $116,00) in B.C.

Mayor of Langley Township, with a population of 105,000 earned $128,000. While in Nova Scotia the mayor of Halifax earns a princely $159,000 for administering the affairs of a municipality of over 400,000 people, and a few hundred miles away in Yarmouth, N.S., the chief of the Acadia First Nation took in $130,000 tax-free, the taxed equivalent of $217,000. Still in Nova Scotia, Chief Sidney Peters of the Glooscap First Nation 'earned' $187,000 in a band of 75 people.

Chief Peters' biography speaks of his 23 years of work experience with not-for-profit groups, band councils, tribal councils and municipal, federal and provincial governments. It's called feeding at the public trough, and it's being done in double-spades. The question is: what are neglected band members going to do about it?