Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today on behalf of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and our 79,000 supporters nationwide. I'm also pleased to speak here on behalf of the dozens of whistleblowers from aboriginal reserves across Canada who have sought help from our offices over the years and who support this legislation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. You've given me a number of points to respond to. I think there are two parts to why this legislation is very important. First of all, grassroots band members across the country have been asking for this. They want to be able to access this information anonymously.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I was just taking my lead from watching question period and seeing how some politicians react.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It depends on how you're defining “government”, but we do support that reserves are—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm just finishing my response. You asked me a question.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We would support what the treaties note, and that is that people on reserves are to abide by the same laws that everyone else does in Canada.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right now, bands are required to give this information to grassroots band members. What I heard from many different grassroots band members was that they would ask their chiefs and councillors for information, such as how much their elected officials were making, whether or not it was the whole audit document, and all kinds of other stuff, and quite often they would be met with a brick wall.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll start with the question about benefits to leaders. I want to stress again that we have never once said that we believe all leaders on reserves are filling their pockets with money and hiding the information from their band members—far from it. In fact, I met with a chief from a northern community in Manitoba.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think under both scenarios you're talking about public funds, maybe not so much from the taxpayers' perspective but from the band members' perspective. When a band owns a business, whether it's a gas station or a casino or some kind of other enterprise, it's the collective members of that community who own it.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes; I don't see a problem with that. Again, we've heard from band members that they like the idea of putting this information on the Internet so that they can access it anonymously. They're aware of the fact that when you put the information on the Internet, everyone has access to it.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  —that this is commercially sensitive information, it's not really. I mean, when you see that the chief is getting $5,000 or $25,000 in “other revenue”, it doesn't tell you what entity it's coming from or that. So it's—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, no, and again, let me be clear. We support the legislation, as it's drafted right now, to assure that politicians on reserves disclose their full pay package to the public.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  And that would be included, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If you talk to Ms. Phyllis Sutherland, she can tell you about her chief's—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  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....