Here are Awards for Government Waste by Jane Taber

Here is a great article by Jane Taber, Hill Columnist for the Canada's National Daily the Globe and Mail. The best thing about Jane's article is that it gives an overview of the issues that our government is facing when it comes to waisting taxpayers money.

Once again we passive Canadians just stand here and take this kind of thing. When someone wants to cut government spending, the NDP ( who only know how to spend) get up in arms, the Liberals ( who always spend no matter what) say that we are attacking the public service and the Bloc ( they always spend our money because its from Canada and so what) are waisted funds anyway, because we invest in these guys so they can take Quebec out of Canada. ( What a concept, try explaining that to the new democracy in Iraq)

Without with with out further adieu, Jane Taber. The Weatherall Awards


MP pensions and junk mail top waste awards
Jane Taber

The award-ceremony season could not go by without the Teddy waste honours. And this morning, dressed in black tie, the Prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Colin Craig, announced the best of the worst government waste. He was accompanied by a person dressed in a pink pig costume – Porky the Waste Hater – and hostess and ceremony assistant, Natasha.

So without further ado, the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Teddy for 2010 is the “Gold-plated MP Pension.”

The CTF is always after the MPs and their generous pension plans that it says is “quite possibly the richest pension plan in the country.”

MPs are eligible for a minimum pension of $46,000 after just 10 years of service. “Oddly enough it is the only government program that all parties in Ottawa seem to agree on,” said Mr. Craig.

The Federal Teddy Award for 2010 goes to “MP Junk Mail.”

“The federal mail-out program allows MPs to send flyers to no more than 10 per cent of the households of any riding in the country,” the CTF says.

The group notes that the flyers have increased in cost from $5.9-million in 2005/06 to $10-million in 2008/09. “The more our government went into debt the more these things were sent out,” Mr. Craig aid.

This is the 12th annual Teddy awards, which are named after former bureaucrat Ted Weatherill who was fired from government in 1998 for claiming $150,000 in meal expenses over eight years.

There were others considered for the 2010 honours. Here are some of the better of the worst of federal government waste:

» $1.5 million for unused hotel rooms at the Francophonie Summit in Quebec City;

» the Public Works officials who sold the Queen’s silver by mistake (they sold it for $4000 and then spent $100,000 to get it back);

» and the $1.4-million spent by the Royal Canadian Mint to figure out that $20-million worth of missing gold was not missing at all.