Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can think of lots of examples of how this legislation would really help. I previously mentioned two examples in Atlantic Canada where once the band members knew what was going on, they elected a brand-new slate of officials. In one case, they voted in Chief Janette Peterson bec

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, exactly. Once this information is out there, this will help a lot of the good chiefs and councillors who are doing really good things for their communities.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the things we like about this legislation is that it doesn't really increase the burden on reserves. This information already has to be produced. What it does is it merely puts it online. You know, it wouldn't take long at all to take, say, all the statements from last y

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes and no. Yes, we have the numbers. No, we don't have the names. That's the big problem. We got a big spreadsheet that showed salary information, usually by province—with Atlantic Canada, they grouped them all as one—and you could see the pay information by community, but all

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Not when it comes to a politician's pay. I mean, if someone is earning pay for work that is not related to being an elected official.... For example, if you yourself have a part-time job delivering newspapers or something and you get income from that, by all means, that's your pr

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You made that comment previously about government-to-government funding. If you look at funding between governments throughout Canada, there are all kinds of rules and regulations with that funding. When the federal government gives the provincial governments money for health car

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

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  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 me

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 acces

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  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 f

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.