The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
By Jonathon Naylor With the City of Flin Flon and Town of Creighton expanding their websites, residents are about to enjoy a much greater level of municipal transparency. How ironic it is, then, to see that Flin Flon MP Niki Ashton opposes affording our neighbours in First Nations communities the most basic level of openness in local government. Ms. Ashton recently voted against second reading of a bill that would require band chiefs and councillors to publicly disclose their salaries. Bill C-575 is a private member's bill, meaning MPs are traditionally free to vote their conscience, regardless of party viewpoint. Despite representing a riding that is at least two-thirds aboriginal, with dozens of reserves, Ms. Ashton followed the general path of opposition MPs by giving the bill the thumbs down. It nevertheless passed by a vote of 151-128. In a soon-to-be-published interview, Ms. Ashton says she believes in transparency but felt the bill infringed on the self-governed nature of First Nations, which "ought to have their own mechanisms of ensuring accountability." Everyone can agree that bands ought to have such mechanisms. The reality is that not all of them do, despite having had, in many cases, decades to bolster transparency. That being the case, should Ottawa merely stand by and hope that the necessary openness will materialize? At what point is enough enough? Another New Democrat MP from Manitoba, Pat Martin, outlined his dubious case against Bill C-575. Saying that the bill assumes "First Nations are corrupt," he added in an interview with the QMI Agency that "We have no right to impose how First Nations use their resources." Of course requiring public disclosure of politician pay does not assume corruption; it engenders accountability. All Canadians living outside reserves can easily find out how much their mayor and councillors earn. Do aboriginals deserve any less? As for Mr. Martin's other claim, this bill has nothing to do with dictating how reserves must "use their resources." It merely lets people know how much of those resources are compensating elected officials. Disappointing What is most disappointing about Ms. Ashton's position is that Bill C-575 is hardly a partisan piece of legislation. It's not Stephen Harper slashing corporate taxes or toughening up drug laws, moves that are diametrically opposed to the NDP line of reasoning. No, this is merely one MP, Tory Kelly Block, saying that on-reserve aboriginal people merit access to the same information about their civic leaders as do other Canadians. Those other Canadians, by the way, are not disinterested actors in all of this, as it is their federal taxes from which chiefs and band councillors derive their wages. They too have a right to know these pay levels, just as they know how much their federally funded MPs and ministers earn. Before we go any further, let us acknowledge the obvious and point out that not every chief and band councillor is wildly overpaid, living the high life while their people wallow in poverty. Many of them are honourable individuals pushing for substantive reform in a difficult situation. And their bands are transparent. But media reports of the past year illustrate that in some cases, perhaps a lot, chiefs and councillors are secretly bestowing themselves outrageous sums. Funds that should be used to raise a tragic standard of living are instead going into politicians' pockets. Ms. Ashton was given a firm mandate by northern Manitobans to oppose the Harper agenda, and she generally does that, her vote to quash the long-gun registry notwithstanding. But she was not given a mandate to vote down bills that would grant the bulk of her constituents access to data the rest of us have long enjoyed. Nor was she given a mandate to deny off-reserve taxpayers a greater understanding of how their money is being spent on First Nations. First Nations in northern Manitoba and across the country are horribly broken. Disclosing chief and councillor salaries will not in and of itself change that, but empowering everyday people through added accountability can't hurt. It is difficult to imagine Ms. Ashton's aboriginal constituents approving of her stance on Bill C-575. Some chiefs and councillors might be behind her, for obvious reasons, but regular people living on the reserve? They must be as puzzled by this as the rest of us. Local Angle runs Fridays.3/21/2011
