Semiahmoo First Nation members ‘in shock’ over officials’ high salaries

Darren Dolan, a Semiahmoo resident and band member, reaches for a water bottle in the kitchen of his house on the reserve as his girl friend Debbie Anderson cooks dinner. Dolan pays for water to be trucked in for washing, laundry and showers and also buys bottled water for drinking and cooking.
Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann , The Province

Reserve residents say it’s unfair they have to live in ‘third-world conditions

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun August 15, 2015

Band members on the Semiahmoo First Nation say they were shocked to hear their chief and a councillor were raking in massive salaries while their people live in semi-squalor on the tiny Surrey reserve.

Darren Dolan and his cousin Darlene Clark are now calling for an audit to open the books, saying they had been trying for years to find out where the band’s money was going but never got a response from their council.

Semiahmoo chief receives annual salary of nearly $270,000

Councillor Joanne Charles and Chief Willard Cook of the Semiahmoo First Nation were paid salaries totalling nearly $460,000 in the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Photograph by: Ian Lindsay , PNG

Most of reserve’s income is provincial grant

By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver Sun, August 13, 2015

The tiny Semiahmoo First Nation in Surrey paid salaries to its chief and one of its councillors totalling nearly $460,000 in the 2013-14 fiscal year.

The community of less than 100 joins a handful of other First Nations in British Columbia that have paid their chiefs exorbitant salaries, disclosed through now-required financial filings to the federal government.