As the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's unofficial go-to guy on reserve matters, I get tons of emails, calls and brown envelopes from grassroots band members.

Sadly, too many of their stories are the same - 'the Chief and Council won't release the documents,' 'ballot boxes went missing for a few hours,' "the band office burned with all of the information,' etc.

That's not to say all reserves are run by corrupt leaders, but I have heard from too many communities to know that we're not talking about a small problem. In fact, I suspect APTN created the drama Blackstone because corruption issues are so well known among Canada's aboriginal community.

If you haven't seen Blackstone, I recommend tuning in. I PVR'd and watched a couple episodes and found it portrayed the types of shenanigans I hear about regularly from grassroots band members. Here a link to the show - http://www.aptn.ca/pages/blackstone/

I thought I would also post a news release I received from the Kawacatoose First Nation. Some band members are upset about their Chief and Council reportedly doubling their salaries and engaging in questionable labour practices. I really hope the news releases's content is wrong, but I've heard from too many people from the Kawacatoose reserve to question the validity of the allegations in the release.

While we often look upon citizens in countries like Libya and Egypt with pitty, Canadians seem to have become too accustomed to the shenanigans in our own backyard. As the 'Harper tories' were the only party willing to support something as basic as requiring reserve politicians to make their salaries public, I sincerely hope the tories have the guts to stomach even more reform when it comes to reserve matters.

Grassroots band members and taxpayers seem to more than tired of the status quo.