No, absolutely not. In fact, some of the numbers you have quoted there, that the AFN used, are from the federal government, and we have advised the federal government that those numbers were incorrect. We've advised the bureaucracy that the numbers were wrong. They looked at some of the pay information, not others....
If you look at a pay sheet from a reserve...there are often, I believe, four columns: salary, honorarium, other, and travel. On the “other” column, I believe the federal government's numbers didn't include that, even though it's pay. If you look at the travel column...quite often that includes pay as well. It's not just a reimbursement for airfare, hotels, and those types of expenses. We saw some examples where someone expensed over $100,000 in travel. How could a reserve politician expense over $100,000 in travel and receipts? It just doesn't happen. What it is, is that there are per diems in there for going on trips.
So those numbers were wrong that were provided by the AFN. We stand by the numbers as the best possible estimates we could provide. We've also noted, as I said earlier in our recommendations, that the travel column should be clarified, so that going forward it's clear that it should not include pay for attending different trips and so that money would be put into the other categories and people could see what's happening.
Let's be clear: we do know of some very clear examples where reserve politicians were making more than the Prime Minister of Canada.
Look at Shirley Clarke from the Glooscap First Nation. Talk to her today. You don't have to call her “chief”, because she's not a chief anymore. Her community was disgusted by what was going on and they turfed her out.