The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincial

[styky]

Mountie probe of alleged leak on income trust tax hits almost $500,000

By Dean Beeby (CP) –

OTTAWA — The meter is still running on the RCMP's four-year-old probe into the alleged leak of an income-trust taxation measure, with costs about to hit a half million dollars.

The investigation - a political bombshell during the 2005-2006 election campaign - eventually fizzled: no one was fingered for any leak, though a civil servant was charged for allegedly profiting from inside information.

As of last month, the Mounties had spent $445,000 on their probe, including almost $60,000 on travel and related expenses, the force said in response to an Access to Information Act request from The Canadian Press.

More than 8,700 hours of staff time has been logged on the case so far, with more to come as the RCMP helps prepare the Crown's case against Serge Nadeau.

Nadeau, a senior official with the Finance Department, was dismissed without pay from his position after he was charged in February 2007 with criminal breach of trust, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The RCMP allege the Orleans, Ont., resident used inside information about a Liberal government decision not to tax income trusts to make between $6,368 and $7,378 on the stock market.

Nadeau pleaded not guilty and has a trial date set for April 6 next year in Ottawa. None of the accusations against him have been proven in court.

Ralph Goodale, then the Liberal finance minister, announced on Nov. 23, 2005, a plan not to tax income trusts but to cut corporate dividend taxes instead.

The news caused an immediate rise in the stock value of income trusts as investors were caught off guard by the move, which was intended to help level the playing field between income trusts and traditional corporations.

Stock-market watchers, however, noticed unusual buy-sell spikes in the hours before the announcement, suggesting the move had been leaked to some players.

The episode quickly morphed into a political scandal when the RCMP released word on Dec. 28, 2005 - in the midst of a federal election campaign - that they were investigating a potential leak of insider information. The release included Goodale's name.

The damning news tarred the incumbent Liberals with suspicions of impropriety, even as they were fending off critics of the sponsorship scandal, and helped cost them the election in January 2006.

But after a laborious 14-month probe, the Mounties produced but a single charge, against a bureaucrat, with no evidence pointing to any leak outside the Finance Department.

Senior RCMP officers, including then commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, refused to speak to staff from the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, which investigated whether the Mounties acted inappropriately in releasing word of the income-trust probe during the election campaign.

Even so, the commission concluded there was no evidence Zaccardelli deliberately meddled in the campaign.

The RCMP has since developed a draft policy responding to the commission's recommendations to strictly limit public information about sensitive investigations, particularly during election campaigns.

"The draft is currently under review and once approved, it will be incorporated in the RCMP's overall communication policy," said spokeswoman Sgt. Julie Gagnon.

The case against Nadeau, in the meantime, continues.

"It's a complicated case with lots of material, voluminous material, to go over," said Raphael Schachter, Nadeau's Montreal-based lawyer.

The prosecution has turned over 18 full boxes of material, he said, adding that the case has been extremely difficult for his client.

"This has had a profound affect on his personal and professional life," Schachter said. "It's been devastating to him professionally and personally."

Nadeau declined an interview, referring all questions to his lawyer.

Under the Access to Information Act, The Canadian Press in May 2007 asked the RCMP for the cost of the income-trust probe. The Mounties responded a month later they were "unable to locate any information."

But the force relented more than two years later after a complaint to the Information Commissioner of Canada, releasing limited financial information.
<a href=http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hNcn6zQ0DDCojPQ5CWH3QeVomdYQ>source</a>

[styky]

Feds paid out nearly $7M in separation, severance pay

By Elizabeth Thompson - SUN MEDIA

Last Updated: 8th December 2009,
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has paid out nearly $7 million to political staffers who have left their jobs over the past two years.

The amount of “separation pay” that was doled out at the discretion of cabinet ministers is more than twice the amount of “severance pay” the Conservatives were obliged to pay departing political aides under government guidelines.

In a response to a written question tabled in the House of Commons, Treasury Board president Vic Toews revealed that between Oct. 19, 2007, and Oct. 19, 2009, the government handed out $2.01 million to departing aides in severance pay and $4.9 million in separation pay.

The government did not say how many people received payouts.

Under the government’s guidelines for ministers’ offices, political staffers are entitled to two weeks of severance pay for each year of service — regardless of whether they resigned, were laid off or dismissed. Those who had previously worked for a member of Parliament or for the public service could be entitled to an extra week of severance pay for each year of service in those roles.

However, cabinet ministers also have the discretion to pay departing staffers separation pay of up to four months salary on top of their severance pay.

For example, if a senior political staffer paid $100,000 a year served for two years, they would be entitled to $7,692 in severance pay but could also pocket up to $30,769 in separation pay.

NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair, who served as a provincial cabinet minister in Quebec, described the $7 million payout to Conservative staffers as “an outrage” and an “orgy with public money.”

“When they are letting go staff, they are treating the public purse like it was a Conservative candy store,” he said.

Liberal finance critic John McCallum, a former cabinet minister who posed the original written question to the government, also found the total high.

Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation called for the government to scrap the system of discretionary separation pay.

“It’s a sugaring-off account because the staff know where the bodies are buried.”

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 1-sun.html

[styky]

Taxpayers funding 'ghost' commission

By GREG WESTON, QMI Agency

Last Updated: 28th January 2010
Canadian taxpayers have shelled out more than $1 million for a federal appointments commission that has no commissioners and hasn’t overseen a single appointment in four years.

In fact, it isn’t even supposed to exist.

Stephen Harper created the commission in 2006, and promptly scrapped it in a huff.

Yet the spending continues, and indeed the commission lives on, despite serving no apparent use.

This bizarre tale from the federal funny farm began shortly after the 2006 election, when Harper created the commission as a cornerstone of the Conservatives’ promise of greater openness and accountability in government.

The purpose of the new agency was ostensibly to shut down the federal patronage trough, ending a long history of governments handing out thousands of plum positions to their respective political pals.

Instead, the commission would develop and oversee a whole new system of filling the more than 3,000 federal appointments through a “fair and open selection process based on merit.”

It sure seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, Harper chose one of his closest political cronies to be the first chairman of the commission that was going to rid federal appointments of partisan favouritism.

While Alberta oilman Gwyn Morgan was infinitely qualified for just about any job, the political optics couldn’t have been worse.

The opposition parties not only savaged Morgan in public, they used their majority in Parliament to pass a motion condemning the appointment.

Harper was so ticked at what he called a “partisan political lynching” of his friend that he refused to appoint anyone else to head the commission, and junked the whole idea.

Or so we thought.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed,” Harper said at the time. “What this tells us is we won’t be able to clean up the process in this minority parliament. We’ll obviously need a majority government to do that in the future.”

Harper said he didn’t expect others to step forward for the job, so the commission was disbanded the day after it was formed.

Or not.

Turns out, like all good government operations, the appointments commission gave birth to bureaucracy far easier created than deleted.

The so-called commission “secretariat” was originally set up to pave the way for the formation of the commission — and still is.

The latest government financial estimates show this bureaucratic hive of inactivity cost taxpayers $1,067,000 from 2006 to 2009.

That kept two people on the payroll, and no doubt provided all the usual furniture and new carpets critical to a commission that barely lasted one day.

If so much expensive ado about nothing weren’t enough to make taxpayers see red, the Harper government now estimates it will need twice as many people and three-times the annual budget to do more of the same for another two years.

Exactly what the commission support department does without a commission to support is not entirely clear.

Like all government agencies, the appointments commission has filed an annual statement of plans and priorities since its inception, setting out what it hoped to achieve in the year ahead.

In 2006, the commission said its goal for that year was “to ensure fair and competency-based processes are in place for the recruitment and selection of qualified individuals.”

It stated the identical goal for 2007. And 2008. And 2009. And 2010.

Think of it as a work in progress.

greg.weston@sunmedia.ca
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnis ... 39231.html

[styky]

Foreigners behind $500,000 medicare scam

'Highly sophisticated' scam; RAMQ creates special investigative unit

By AARON DERFEL, The GazetteFebruary 5, 2010 8:00 AM

MONTREAL – Quebec's medicare insurance board has set up a special investigative unit as a result of the largest fraud in its history in which about 750 foreigners obtained free health care at a cost to taxpayers of more than $500,000.

An official with the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec yesterday described a "sophisticated" scam that lasted five years in which people from the Middle East, almost all from Lebanon, used bogus documentation to obtain medicare cards.

"These people simulated their residence here in Quebec," said Marc Lortie, a RAMQ spokesperson.

"These individuals, with the complicity of an immigration consultant, procured automatic banking cards, telephone cards and other documents to show proof of residence."

A 1 1/2-year-long investigation by RAMQ revealed that 1,451 individuals had falsely obtained medicare cards. Of that number, 747 received medical services that cost $508,768.

Lortie said that all the people involved had received permanent residency status by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. "In addition to defrauding RAMQ, they also lied to the federal government," he added.

With their permanent residency papers in hand, they showed up at RAMQ offices in Montreal to get their medicare cards. But they then returned to Lebanon, Lortie said.

Under RAMQ regulations, if a resident of Quebec is out of the country for at least 183 days in a given year, he or she loses their right to medicare coverage, and must reapply.

RAMQ has so far recovered about $42,000. Lortie said that individuals will have to pay back all illegally obtained health-care expenses if they want to reclaim their medicare coverage.

"The first objective of these individuals was to obtain Canadian citizenship, not necessarily to obtain free health care," Lortie explained.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials were not available for comment. But in general, the department refrains from discussing personal cases.

Karine Rivard, press attaché to Health Minister Yves Bolduc, said the government continues to have full confidence in RAMQ despite the massive fraud.

"RAMQ has been doing everything it can to fight fraud - from inspections to adding a bar code to the medicare card," Rivard said. "We can never avoid fraud completely, but the important thing is to react to fraud and to recover money."

Asked to explain how the fraud could have lasted five years, Lortie replied that the operation was "highly sophisticated and the immigration consultant had many accomplices."

As part of its response to the fraud, RAMQ established a team of four full-time inspectors in October to investigate suspicious cases. Lortie said RAMQ has taken other measures, but declined to disclose them for fear of tipping off those who want to take advantage of the system.

In 2008-2009, RAMQ reclaimed $1.1 million in fraudulent or irregular claims.

"I don't want to minimize anything, but $1 million out of a budget of $7.8 billion is not enormous," Lortie said.
<a href=http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Foreigners+medicare/2524298/story.html>source</a>

[styky]

Cabinet ministers' office renos cost $5M: docs

By ELIZABETH THOMPSON, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: 12th February 2010
OTTAWA — Sprucing up cabinet ministers’ offices with everything from renovations and new furniture to artwork and hi-tech gadgets has cost taxpayers nearly $5 million over five years.

An analysis by QMI of more than 500 pages of documents tabled in Parliament found there is a wide range of spending on the often posh offices of cabinet ministers.

While various Canadian Heritage ministers spent $535,198 between 2004-2005 and 2008-2009, nearly half of it on technology such as BlackBerrys, computers and cameras, Minister of State for Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher spent only $162.25 during that period to rent printers.

The documents also give Canadians a glimpse at where some of the $4.9 million spent on cabinet ministers offices went. Technology is the biggest ticket item, topping $2.7 million. While BlackBerrys are ubiquitous, the list also includes $600 worth of digital photo frames bought in 2008 for the Veterans Affairs minister’s office.

Renovations topped $1.1 million followed by $761,208 worth of new furniture and $458,997 to rent or buy artwork.

A single project, setting up an office in 2004-2005 for the new infrastructure minister, racked up a tab of $478,838 — 41% of all the money spent on ministerial renovations over five years.

While some renovations, such as $18,115 at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency in 2008-2009, stemmed from security threats that had been identified, there was no explanation for other jobs such as $3,931 worth of brass polishing for the justice minister’s office between 2004-2005 and 2005-2006.

Spending on ministerial suites has tended to be a bit lower under the Conservatives than under the last years of the Liberals, although it has gradually been creeping up. Spending on the prime minister’s own offices has dropped from $38,440 in 2004-2005 and $39,924 in 2005-2006 under the Liberals to $1,917 in 2006-2007, $1,966 in 2007-2008 and $7,705 in 2008-2009 under the Conservatives.

One difference between the two administrations is flowers. While former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin’s administration didn’t spend anything on them, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office has spent $2,670 over the past three years.

According to the documents, Harper’s office was one of the few to spend anything on flowers.

Andrew MacDougall, spokesman for Harper, said the flowers were purchased for meetings with dignitaries.

There is no prohibition on renovations but ministers are expected to spend money wisely, he added.

Glenn Thibeault, NDP MP for Sudbury who requested the documents, said he expected to see less spending on ministerial offices — particularly since the government talked about tightening belts and rolled back wages for public servants.

“Why are we seeing somewhat of a double standard when it comes to their spending on ministerial renovations?”

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 60936.html

[styky]

Deficit no barrier to pricey travel by MPs, senators

By Joan Bryden, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Last Updated: March 1, 2010
OTTAWA — Federal politicians aren’t letting a record deficit stop them from jetting around the globe in style.

MPs and senators from all parties are proposing to spend almost $1.5 million in taxpayers’ money in the next fiscal year to attend meetings in such exotic locales as Swaziland, Seychelles, Trinidad, Kenya, India and Indonesia.

And with sky-high airfares of up to $10,500 each, they don’t appear to be planning to fly economy — or shopping for the lowest price.

Details of the planned excursions are contained in the draft budgets for the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, obtained by The Canadian Press. They are just two of a dozen parliamentary associations to which federal politicians belong.

The IPU is asking for $870,366 and the CPA for $605,818 — most of it for international travel. Both budgets must still be approved by the Joint Interparliamentary Council, which is overseen by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Senate’s internal economy committee.

The IPU budget provides the most detail, including estimated airfares for each of its 16 international trips planned for the 2010-11 fiscal year. For instance: $10,500 to Jakarta and New Delhi, $5,000 to Vienna, $7,000 to Geneva, and $2,500 to New York.

The ticket prices seem very high, even for business class. The Canadian Press was able to find business or executive class fares for $3,600 to New Delhi, $8,700 to Jakarta, $3,000 to Geneva and $3,000 to Vienna.

And while politicians often maintain the comfort of business class is justified on long overseas flights, $2,500 to make the short hop to New York is several times the cost of an economy class ticket.

The proposed fares don’t appear to take into account the fact that many of the trips are months away — some as much as a year away — which should result in some savings for tickets booked in advance.

The CPA’s draft budget doesn’t specify airfares for each of its 11 overseas trips planned for the coming fiscal year. But in notes on the trip to Kenya in September for eight delegates and one staff member, it observes: “when circumstances permit the purchase of tickets well in advance, substantial savings can be made in the cost of the airfares.”

It adds that the delegates will only be reimbursed an amount “corresponding to the lowest economy fare.” There is, however, no similar advisory for any of the CPA’s other trips.

The CPA boasts a membership of 133 MPs and senators, representing all parties, while the IPU has 75 members. Anywhere from one to nine parliamentarians are slated to go on each of the planned trips.

According to the parliamentary website, the dozen parliamentary associations “promote the country’s interests abroad on a continuing basis” through regular meetings and conferences.

Neither Russ Hiebert, the Conservative MP who chairs the CPA, nor Tory Senator Donald Oliver, president of the IPU, returned calls about their associations’ budgets.

But in a cover letter to the Joint Interparliamentary Council asking for approval of the CPA’s budget, Hiebert says the Commonwealth association’s “mission is to promote the advancement of parliamentary democracy by enhancing knowledge and understanding of democratic governance.”

Further, he says it aims to deepen ties to other Commonwealth countries.

Such high-minded goals cut no ice with Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He thinks the associations are a flimsy excuse for sending politicians on taxpayer-funded junkets.

“They fly first class. They eat and drink first class. It’s all first class and it’s a first-class waste,” Gaudet said.

“It’s not clear what the benefits are. If anything, all they do is get together with a bunch of other like-minded politicians to figure out other ways to take more of our money and spend more of our money.”

With the government projected to rack up a record deficit of $56 billion this year, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is expected to outline in this week’s federal budget plans for limiting spending. Gaudet believes he should start by axing the travel budgets of parliamentary associations.

“At a time when the government is borrowing $153 million a day with no end in sight to those deficits, these things should top the list of reductions.”

Gaudet is not optimistic, however, that the overseas junkets will come to a halt any time soon given that they’re highly prized perks utilized by MPs and senators from all parties.

“Sadly enough, none of this is very surprising anymore. Same old, same old. No matter who’s in power, no matter what the state of the economy, it doesn’t stop,” he said.

“(Politicians) can go hammer and tongs (at each other) but when it comes to their pay, perks and pensions at the trough, they’re well united.”

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 70396.html

[Fabulous Fred]

This is disgraceful and nit is an outrage for this to be going on when so very many Canadians are really struggling to make ends meet.

What next? Is this Canada's future?

<b> Mugabe's lavish birthday televised to impoverished nation

$450,000 meal a 'senseless extravagance' – 8,000 lobsters, 4,000 portions of caviar</b>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0gn5VWce0

[styky]

Farm Credit Canada spent $12K on Roughrider tix

By ELIZABETH THOMPSON, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: March 1, 2010 2:26pm

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 1-qmi.html
OTTAWA — When the Saskatchewan Roughriders take the field, employees from Farm Credit Canada are there to cheer them on.

During the past two years, the Crown corporation paid $12,542 for seasons tickets and playoff tickets for the popular CFL football team. Added to that is hundreds of dollars worth of snacks, drinks and meals in the club’s Green and White Lounge that have been charged to the Crown corporation, sometimes as “FCC visibility.”

Farm Credit’s seasons tickets are largely for the use of the Crown corporation’s employees. While the eight tickets — four on each side of the field — might sometimes be used by President Greg Stewart or other executives, they are also used by other employees, said Greg Willner.

Willner says it’s about community investment.

“Our employees feel passionate about the communities in which they live and work and we have a responsibility to contribute to those communities.”

[Thistle2]

Styky this is not going to help my insomnia. Ah the life of a government employee. All they have to do is speak the word and money falls into their hands. In my next life!!

[styky]

Styky this is not going to help my insomnia. Ah the life of a government employee. All they have to do is speak the word and money falls into their hands. In my next life!!

What ever happened to the time when if you wanted to support a team you bought your own ticket. Or how about expanding your knowledge about another country by opening your own wallet.

And another thing......if these idiot Senators are attending a conference perhaps they could do with being introduced to the not to recent invention of "conference calling". With a computer you have streaming video. Grandma's and Grandpa's who live far from families do it all the time......ON THEIR OWN DIME and for less that the cost of a bottled water on a plane.

[styky]

Neil Reynolds
OOPs: Ottawa's mistake of grand proportions

Who watches the parliamentary watchdogs, who cost the taxpayer $175-million a year?
Neil Reynolds
<a href=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/oops-ottawas-mistake-of-grand-proportions/article1487730/>Globe and Mail</a>

Published on Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010 12:00AM EST Last updated on Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010 7:39AM EST

By last count, University of Moncton economist and public policy scholar Donald J. Savoie says the federal government has 14 "officers of Parliament" whose primary function - as apparently distinct from everyone else in public service - is to tell the truth. The tabulation is not necessarily precise because some officers of Parliament (hereafter: OOPs) have not yet attained the full autonomy that only time can bestow. One such novice OOP is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who oversees a 15-person unit of the Library of Parliament. But OOPs are highly fashionable. They will certainly multiply in size and in number.

Dr. Savoie is no fan of these parliamentary watchdogs that exist solely to monitor other people's work - on the apparent assumption that senior public servants cannot be trusted faithfully to discharge their responsibilities. Legally independent of the government and only notionally answerable to Parliament, OOPs are (in Dr. Savoie's judgment) an elite corps of largely meddlesome bureaucrats with, in most cases, little real work to do.

Who watches these watchdogs? Donald Savoie, for one, watches them. As one of Canada's most eminent authorities on government, he speaks with authority. In Moncton, he holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance. Author of more than 30 books on public administration, and editor of many more, his reputation is international - reflecting a lifetime of public policy research and academic positions at Harvard University, Oxford University and the London School of Economics.

Dr. Savoie says some officers of Parliament - the Auditor-General (since 1868) and the Chief Electoral Officer (since 1920) are two - warrant the independence that comes from working for Parliament rather than for the government. He believes, however, that most of the others should be either disbanded or compressed.

Most of the current officers, he says, are costly as entities unto themselves. But they impose further costs as well - often because of duplicated work - on the "whole machinery of government." How much do they cost? The government puts the direct cost at $175-million a year. But this number, he says, tells only a small part of the story. Every government department and every government agency must equip itself to respond to the departmental intrusions of all the watchdogs. In his judgment, OOPs cost Canadian taxpayers more than $1-billion a year.

"Think of it," Dr. Savoie says. "Officers of Parliament and their staff get up in the morning thinking of ways to be relevant and visible. They do not deliver services to Canadians. The only way they can be relevant is to stand above the fray and pass judgment on what everyone else is doing. They are watchdogs with conflicting mandates who, at times, must think very hard to come up with things to do. There is no reason why we couldn't collapse these 14 officers into four or five - as they have done in Britain and Australia."

It is precisely this kind of waste, Dr. Savoie says, that persuades Canadians that the federal government is incapable to getting its expenditures under control.

Yet another consequence, he says, is the erosion of crucial decision-making incentives in the senior levels of the public service: "It is difficult to ask bureaucrats, who tend to be risk-averse in the first place, to take any risks when 14 officers of Parliament and their staffs - accountable to no one except, perhaps, God - are looking over their shoulders every day."

The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) is a good example of an unnecessary function? Formed in 2007 to conduct independent analysis of (among other things) the federal budget, the PBO crunches the same numbers that the Finance Department crunches - a function performed also by the Bank of Canada, by all of the commercial banks, by all of the big accounting companies, by all of the big brokerage houses and by all of the important think tanks from coast to coast.

When Ernst & Young analyzed federal budget surpluses in the 1990s, incidentally, it determined that Finance Department budget projections were more accurate than private sector projections - which, given the department's access to the best minds in the country, was hardly surprising. When economist Tim O'Neill analyzed the department's budget surpluses in 2005, he advised the government that no new agency would have any greater luck in "forecast accuracy" than existing institutions. Everyone errs in making fiscal forecasts, of course, regardless how sophisticated the forecaster. These errors are rarely sinister. Across the border, the Federal Reserve (annual budget: $450-million U.S.) errs in its economic forecasts, too - and it has never correctly anticipated a recession.

In his next book, Power: Where Is It?, Dr. Savoie examines and appraises the OOPs phenomenon. He notes, somewhat ironically, that his report will be a little dated. The government created "a few more" OOPs in the time it took to publish the book after he finished writing it. (The book will be released in May).

[styky]

Government waste highlighted at 'Teddy' awards

By PETER ZIMONJIC, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: March 10, 2010
OTTAWA — MPs sending out junk mail, the City of Toronto’s homeless audit and the Nova Scotia's MLA expense scandal earned golden sows in the annual awards for taxpayer waste.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s 12th annual ‘Teddy’ awards for government waste highlighted work by QMI Agency, which first exposed the MPs’ junk mail scandal.

“The flyers are in addition to riding-wide MP flyers and have increased in cost from $5.9 million in 2005-06 to $10 million in 2008-09,” said CTF Prairie director Colin Craig. “Oddly enough as our deficit skyrocketed, MPs hiked up their usage of these flyers to tell us about everything but the deficit.”

Another QMI Agency story about government officials who wrongly sold antique silver baskets from the Governor General’s residence online for $4,000 and then had to spend $100,000 to get them back was also nominated in the federal category.

The City of Toronto’s decision to hire people for $100 each to pretend to be homeless for the purposes of an audit of the city’s homeless persons was also a QMI Agency scoop and beating out other cities to win the Teddy for municipal waste.

MLAs in the Nova Scotia legislature took home the provincial prize for waste after an audit of their expenses revealed a gross misuse of government funds.

For example, MLAs were found to have expensed $8,000 to install a generator in a politician’s home, $13,500 for office furniture and $2,500 for a television.

The lifetime achievement award went to “gold-plated MP pensions” which the CTF said were the “most generous in all of Canada.”
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 1-qmi.html

[styky]

Federal contractor racks up hefty bills
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | 7:03 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose says she wants the contracts reviewed.

Federal contract workers charged the government $5,266 to install six potlights and $1,000 to replace a light switch.

Details of costly charges racked up by a government contractor were splashed across two pages in Montreal's La Presse on Wednesday.

Profac, a subsidiary of corporate giant SNC-Lavalin, has had a $550-million annual maintenance and management contract with Ottawa since 2004 that was recently extended to 2013.

Among the bills that La Presse uncovered through Access to Information was one for $18,650 to provide extra daytime cleaning in the offices of former Public Works minister Christian Paradis and his deputy over a six-month period.

Two tall Yucca plants and their pots set the taxpayer back $1,948. A doorbell replacement came in at $1,000.

The contract covers 320 federal buildings, but the access request focused on two Public Works buildings in Gatineau, Que., across the river from Parliament Hill.

Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said she wants the contract reviewed. "These expenses are clearly over the top and of great concern to me," Ambrose told reporters Wednesday.

Both Ambrose and Paradis also underlined they had no direct hand in the awarding of the contract.

But the opposition, fresh from a week of government rhetoric on fiscal restraint, pointed out that the contract was supposed to end in 2009 and was renewed once until 2011, and then again to 2013.

"When they go cut a ribbon to announce something, it's not the bureaucrats they send, it's them," said Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. "It's their responsibility."

"I've been in business before, and when you receive bills from suppliers, you study them, you make sure nobody has made a mistake," said Liberal MP Marcel Proulx.

"It's the same thing here, in the sense that if someone gets a bill for $2,000 worth of plants, they have a responsibility to check if it's worth $2,000."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/ ... z0hpfjeLBR

[styky]

Cost of going green: Government pays

$1,948 for two plants Tories order audit of property contract with Montreal firm

By David Akin, Canwest News Service
March 11, 2010

The federal government promises to audit and review a contract with a Montreal-based firm that manages government office buildings after learning that federal taxpayers paid $2,000 to buy two plants and more than $18,000 to clean the offices of a minister and a top bureaucrat over a six-month period.

Montreal newspaper La Presse reported those details, quoting invoices submitted to the government that the newspaper obtained using federal access to information laws.

The invoices were submitted by a company called Profac, a subsidiary of Montreal-based SNC Lavalin, as part of Profac's $550-million-a-year contract to manage 320 federal government buildings across Canada.

Some of the invoices included:

n $5,266 to install six recessed lighting pots;

n $1,000 to remove a light switch;

n $1,948 to purchase two potted plants for an office;

n $18,650 to clean the offices of the minister and the deputy minister of the Department of Public Works over a six-month period.

"Those expenses are clearly over the top and of great concern to me," Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said. Ambrose said the authorization for those expenses had been made by departmental staff as the result of a long-term contract between the department and Profac. She said the expenses were not authorized by any minister's office.

"I will be asking my department to review these particular expenditures. I find them to be unacceptable, and I think they are insulting to the average taxpayer," Ambrose said.

Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, the cabinet minister responsible for administering government accounting policies, said an audit was being done on the program, though he declined to answer questions about the nature of that audit.

"It's unacceptable to have these kinds of costs, and we want to put an end to it," Day said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, responding to questions in the House of Commons, said some of the expenditures "do not seem justifiable."

Quebec NDP MP Thomas Mulcair rejected Ambrose's explanations that bureaucrats were at fault.

"Ministers have to answer for what's done in their ministries," Mulcair said. "It was galling to hear Minister Ambrose stand up to say that was the ministry, not the minister, and then sit down. That's the new slogan of the Conservatives. It's never their fault."

The revelations came on the same day that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an advocacy group, awarded the "Teddies" at its annual mock ceremony to point out examples of what it said was wasteful government spending.

This year, at its 12th annual ceremony on Parliament Hill, the group gave the federal government a "lifetime achievement" award for what it called the "gold-plated" pension plan for members of Parliament.

The federal government also won an award for continuing to allow MPs to mail newsletters to those outside their riding -- "tenpercenters" -- at taxpayers' expense. That cost $5.9 million in 2005-06, but it was $10 million in 2008-09.

The City of Toronto won a "Teddy" for paying individuals $100 to dress up as homeless people while the city was conducting an audit of homeless people.

Nova Scotia was dinged with the provincial "Teddy" award for what the group said were outrageous expense claims by members of the provincial legislature.

Newfoundland and Labrador, which paid a $30,000 cellphone bill for one MLA, British Columbia, which paid 241 civil servants to be Olympic "volunteers," and Ontario, for the mismanaged $1-billion eHealth plan, were also singled out.

The "Teddies" are named after former federal bureaucrat Ted Weatherill, who, among other things, billed the government more than $700 for a lunch for two in Paris.
<a href=http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Cost+going+green+Government+pays/2668826/story.html>source</a>

[styky]

This reminds me of the song my Tom Paxton, Sold a Hammer to the Pentagon, and it made me a millionaire on his One Million Lawyers Album.