If you think aboriginals have it so good, come and visit

The annual housing allotment per member is $112.50, writes Chief Gordon T. Auger

Re: “Monitoring is missing,” Editorial, March 31.

Your editorial paints all First Nations with the same brush. I can only speak for the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta, where I am the chief, but still, I do want to comment.

Why should I be held responsible for what others do or don’t do, any more than the mayor of Calgary would want to be held responsible for other cities?

As chief with a population of more than 8,000 members, I get paid $85,000 per year. As council, we are the municipal government, the education board and the health department board (including municipal, provincial and federal programs for our citizens). We are responsible for the roads and infrastructure (water, sewer, etc.), the social services and child-care programs, housing, elders and seniors — and I can go on and on.

My salary equates to, or is less than, the salary that the province and/or the federal government pays to a single program manager.

There are more than one million First Nations people, and you state you hear from many of them — and their dissatisfaction with how their money is spent.

Well, I read your newspaper on occasion and watch TV news, and I wonder if the number of First Nations that you hear from is more or less than the million Calgary residents who complain about what your government spends money on.

I don’t think you understand what the objection to the Transparency Act was about for most of us. We have to report the financial accounts for not just the resources we receive from governments, but for our private businesses. No other private business has to.

We have never had a problem reporting to our members, and if they attend the annual meeting — and normally there are 300 or 400 who do — our auditors present the statements, members can ask any questions they want and they are provided with the answer and the details.

Does the City of Calgary offer their citizens the same opportunity, because I am sure that Calgarians too would like to know that their dollars were also spent properly?

The federal government gives billions of dollars to the cities and provinces annually. Do you think all of it is spent “prudently,” because if we do not, then the government (Liberal or Conservative) places our bands under third-party management, which means they take over the administration and recover the misspent money. I must have missed your editorial board’s statements when you demanded the federal government take over a province or a city when federal dollars were misused.

You are absolutely right when you say, “it’s the job of government to decide where scarce resources are going to be allocated,” and when a government sees that a previous government badly underfunded education, housing and health for First Nations, then it is their job to allocate more resources, so we too can enjoy the same standard of living that you do. If you truly believe that we have been treated fairly, then I invite you to move to Wabasca and put your children in the provincially run school that is ranked 657th out of 659, or in the band school for elementary students that gets $3,000 to $4,000 per student per year less than the provincial school boards are granted. And you will love the housing that we can provide with the $112.50 per member we get annually. And I bet you thought every Indian got a free house!

I could go on, but instead, I suggest that before you write another editorial about First Nations resources, that you talk to a few people who really do know what the situation is.

You can call my office at any time.