Like the sun rising in the east and the moon rotating around the earth, Doug Cuthand’s recent column – “Modest salaries of most chiefs belie CTF claims” – predictably includes several inaccuracies; including some about our organization.

Let’s begin with the title. For years the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has highlighted case after case of exorbitant chief and council pay examples across Canada. But despite Cuthand’s claims, we’ve also gone out of our way to note that such instances are not the norm.

Since we first started pushing for the new First Nations Financial Transparency Act back in 2009, we’ve noted that disclosing chief and council pay publicly would help everyone sort out which chiefs are abusing their power to set their own pay and which ones are not. Ultimately, transparency would empower the grassroots on reserves to hold their elected officials accountable.

In fact, some already have. Since the federal governments started posting chief and council pay data online, residents on the 267-person Shuswap First Nation in B.C. discovered their chief made over $200,000 tax-free. Shocked by the news, the community voted him out of office. Perhaps now the new, lower-paid chief can divert some of the savings towards hooking people up with running water?

Cuthand also uses Toronto Star data to back up his claim that the typical chief makes a “modest” $60,000 per year. Yet, Cuthand neglected to note something else the Toronto Star noted. The $60,000 per year is tax-free. For someone living off reserve in Saskatchewan, and paying income taxes, $60,000 tax-free works out to $81,000. Not exactly chump change considering the average reserve in Canada has about 1,100 people.

Cuthand also neglected to note the $60,000 figure isn’t the full story. As a former insider in aboriginal politics, he knows that most chiefs receive extra money that isn’t reported in the data the Toronto Star reviewed.

While Premier Brad Wall doesn’t get extra pay for meeting other premiers, chiefs often receive extra money for meeting with other chiefs and sitting on publicly-funded boards.

For example, leaked documents revealed Standing Buffalo Chief Roger Redman made $174,000 tax-free in 2011-12 from his community. That figure would have been disclosed in type of data the Toronto Star reviewed. But what wouldn’t have been disclosed is the $13,375 Redman made by sitting on the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations board and the $6,500 he received by sitting on the Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs Inc. It’s not known if he made any money from the File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council. Again, all these payments are tax-free and are related to him being chief.

While Cuthand notes he reviewed our site to look for “positive news” about the “modest” incomes earned by chiefs, perhaps his bias led him right past something we posted back on December 11, 2014. In an article titled “Some of the Higher Chief and Council Pay Numbers We’ve Seen,” we included a large table that showed 88 examples of chiefs and councillors making the equivalent of over $200,000 (for someone living off reserve and paying income taxes).

Cuthand also missed this note on that same article, even though it also appeared in the Toronto Star story as well:

“Please don't consider the figures below as "the norm" - plenty of aboriginal politicians don’t make anywhere near the amounts in the table. But, just as we see with discussions about compensation and benefits for off reserve politicians, it’s the outliers that receive more attention.”

We’re willing to talk about the outliers. It’s too bad Cuthand won’t.

Colin Craig is the former Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation