Focus on excess a useful exercise – StarPhoenix

February 19, 2015

Craig is the prairie director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Doug Cuthand’s column Modest salaries of most chiefs belie CTF claims (SP, Feb. 13) includes several inaccuracies about our organization.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation for years has highlighted examples of exorbitant chief and council pay across Canada. 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 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 pay and which ones are not. Ultimately, transparency would empower the grassroots on reserves to hold their elected officials accountable.

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