Costly Band Council! - Part 2

As the CTF noted in this blog entry, we recently received audit documents from the Peguis reserve in Manitoba showing band council members have been grossly overpaying themselves. The Chief and his four councillors - paid themselves between $174,230-$251,747 for the year ended March 31, 2009.

Well folks, as we pointed out before, those figures are of course income tax free as they were 'earned' by band members living on reserve. Here are some estimates as to what their salaries represent off reserve - in other words, the amounts the average Canadian would have to earn to make the same amount:

Chief Glenn Hudson - $295k

Councillor Mary Sutherland - $316k

Councillor Glen Cochrane - $369K

Councillor Darlene Bird - $382K

Councillor Glennis Sutherland - $373K

By contrast, the Prime Minister of Canada, who serves a population of over 33,000,000 people, earned approximately $310k over the same period; all but the Chief, who serves a community of 7,200, made more than our PM.

However, even that is questionable as he racked up $32,151 in travel during the period and other documents provided to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, suggest he made considerably more.

I what the conditions are like for the average Peguis reserve resident?

By: Colin Craig
Posted: December 19, 2009
Topic: Manitoba

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Comments

Mon, 2009-12-21 12:50 — An Anonymous Taxpayer (not verified)

Band Chief Salaries

I hope you are planning to garner support for your cause based on the salary paid a Band Chief. I find this tactic offensive. Let’s see, we stole their land, introduced them to alcohol, disease and drugs, raped their women, destroyed their livelihood and absconded with their children and placed them in "residential" homes to be abused. And you want to complain about their salaries??? Why don't you total all the money paid to Band Chiefs in all of Canada and see if that equals the amount of money taxpayers gave to GM to operate for just one day. Hmmm, what's 4billion divided by 365? About $11million a day. Why don't you take-on the Chiefs (CEO and CFO) at GM and Chrysler?

Mon, 2009-12-21 19:50 — No more Sympathy from this Taxpayer (not verified)

Band Chief Salaries

To Anonymous, what did you expect the taxpayers to say?

These Chiefs are allways crying for more dollars and allways blaming the goverments for their ills, and lack of fundings.

The last I heard was that GM/Chrysler and it's CEO pays taxes and do provide jobs etc. for the economy, and I might add the money to both was loans to be repaid to the treasury.

Get your head out of the sand and demand ACCOUNTABILITY from these Chiefs etc., and just mayby the Life of Native People in this ountry will change for the better.

The time for action is now, the enemy is not the goverment it is the lack of ACCOUNTABILITY in the System.

Lets dig a little deeper and release the actual dollars paid to Indian Affairs each and every year, I'm pretty sure that these Numbers would shock most Canadians as to the amount of there hard earned tax Dollars are directed to the Natives of Canada, only to be told that it is not enough!!!!

Sat, 2009-12-19 16:34 — An Anonymous Taxpayer (not verified)

Metis

As a metis I would like to know what our head office has been spending. Trips to China, Switzerland and Paris do not sound right. How many Metis are is Paris?

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