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.

Union Demands Cause a Loss of Jobs

I recently got to the office this morning after sitting in traffic an hour longer than I usually do because of a transit strike that has paralyzed Ottawa. As I was sitting in traffic, I was hearing on the radio to one bus driver after another explain his or her thoughts on why they should be on strike. At the same time I cursed out loud that I hated unions and members of unions and now I know why. So here are some of the reasons why I hate unions.

Unions are adversarial. They do not work in the public interest, they work for their own interest. These conflicts add to the overall world situation that forces others to believe in a cause through intimidation.

Unions are not realistic. We are in one of the world's toughest financial situations in some time and we have transit unions having a strike right before Christmas and affecting small business. For example, even though I have a car I cancelled a chiropractic appointment because I was worried about the traffic. The auto sector is on the edge of Chapter 11 and unions will not give into concessions needed, then why should the tax payers. Screw the union.

Unions force companies to relocate to other countries where there are not any unions. For example, Mexico just became the largest country in the Americas to produce cars. You want to know why? No damn unions.

Unions are selfish and breed generations of selfish people. An example during our recent transit strike had single mother with two kids holding down three part-time jobs so as not to go on welfare and as she said to teach her kids that one needed to work hard for a living. She depended on the bus. A comment by a bus driver is that he did not want to be on strike because he had a mortgage and just bought a new truck. What's with that? He has a good job, he has benefits, he has a new truck and this was all built on the back of someone else less fortunate that depends on him. -- so Unions are selfish and breed this mentality.

Unions are greedy. Rather than realise a specific situation and try to make it work, they want to just take the best and leave the rest. Yes my friends, unions are extremely greedy.

Unions bully workers and bully the public. I am not sure why we spend all this money on trying to educate young people in the school yard about bullying other kids. Unions are a perfect example of those who bully. They push their rank and file to vote for major proposals that are not realistic or they don't present there offer to the rank and file. They hold up signs, they scream and shout at people and places, they stop traffic, push others, threaten and do it as a mob. Unions are bullies and bullies my friends are passe. Bullies are right up there with every group or organization that threatens others through intimidation. I am sure you can think of some historical bullies. Unions are one of them.

Unions are also whiners. I never heard more fat cats with good stable jobs whine more when you ask them to do an honest day's work for an a fair wage. They are the biggest babies in the world. They whine about wages, they whine about days off, they whine about not getting enough, when they get what they want they whine about getting more. Unions are a major pain in the butt and they whine. Would you like to join that group. Nice job, whine, whine, whine.

Unions last of all are passe. Its time to put this way of working out to pasture or develop a town near Fort Mc Murry where we can send anyone that wants to be a member of the union. ( sorry Alberta) That way you could have unionized everything. Sort a Pleasentville for union people.

They would all be waiting for someone else to do their job, they would all be on holiday. There would be lineups at the doctor to justify sick days, they would all be on vacation, they would all have new trucks and they would be all going around town bullying each other. It would be a unionized utopia. Union folks with union folks. Cement talking to cement. All greedy, selfish and whining -- what a utopia

So, if you belong to a union good luck in life. You are not a nice person to know.