APTN National News
Hundreds of kilometres to the west of Ottawa in northeastern Saskatchewan, a housing crisis on one small reserve has citizens frustrated and desperate.
Now the community is calling into question the actions of the chief.
APTN National News reporter Larissa Burnouf has this story.
Pelican Narrows is one community out of several in the Peter Ballantye Cree Nation. The total membership of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation is about 10,000. The salary set for chief and council was set by previous administrations. As for the travel and honoraria the fact is, for some reason, the auditor chose to include band member assistance payments to individual members approved by the chief on travel and honoraria line. The dramatic fashion of this story is interesting and provokes dramatic emotions but when boiled down to the facts there really isn’t much there. Maybe APTN should follow up this story with a good look at all the information related to this story. Lack of housing is indeed a result of a combination of poor management and a funding amount that has not increased since 1989. This problem is very complex and includes the pitfalls of being a multi community First Nation. With that said, the dramatic fashion in which this story is told is bringing some excitement to the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. It has even fueled the flames of division in the First Nation. If this is what APTN intended then APTN did good.
” the auditor chose to include band member assistance payments to
individual members approved by the chief on travel and honoraria line”
.wow, that;s a pretty important piece of information to leave out
To be specific Dwayne, the chief of PBCN represents 7 communities and a total population of about 9,500. He rarely conducts business in these outside of pelican narrows and prince albert. The drug charges against him were withdrawn following mediation. Current administration has the ability to trim ‘the salary set by the previous administration’ but has chosen not to.
Approved
I agree he makes too much. That being said, please use the same standards when comparing wages. For instance, you include travel expenses paid out to the Chief when describing his salary of $336,000. What are Harper’s travel expenses? Or for that matter, the President of the United States’ travel expenses? Do we include their travel expenses when describing their salaries? No we don’t. If we did, the PM and President’s wage would be in the hundreds of millions. So don’t do that with the Chief. You are reporting a serious issue that we First Nations need to address, so please don’t cloud the waters with disingenuous comparisons.
A little arithmatic shows that even when you deduct travel expenses, he still takes over $100,000 salary for “governing” a community of 600 people. This is an outrageous amount, particularly when people in the community are going hungry and cold. Cloudy waters or not – this is just plain greedy.