It's Just Money

Budgets balance themselves and money springs up from everywhere and so on ... :

Parliament’s Budget Officer yesterday said CERB payments to high schoolers will be investigated. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not comment on $635.9 million in relief cheques to children, but called the pandemic “potentially scarring” for young people: “That is why we moved forward with unprecedented measures, with the CERB for students for example.”

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This time, Mothercorp’s CEO Catherine Tait has requested the regulator require — wait for it —less oversight of their expenditures, specifically regarding the CBC’s beefed-up digital offerings, where the CBC needs greater “flexibility,” according to Tait. “She is asking the CRTC to renew its licences for five years with slimmed-down regulatory scrutiny of its digital content compared to its radio and television programs,”the CBC itself reportedon January 11. That sounds fair.

Clearly it’s unreasonable for us taxpayers, if CBC’s spending $1.2 billion per year of our money, to demand more accountability and transparency. Such amounts are, after all, known in Ottawa as “rounding errors”. But let’s stand on principle and have a look.

Unfortunately, it’s not exactly easy for the average taxpayer, despite the immense horsepower of the internet, to investigate the financial workings of the CBC, determine ratings statistics, etc., simply by Googling. The broadcaster produces typically turgid annual reports, a mixture of corporate boilerplate and boosterism rendered in splashy, obviously costly graphics. Independent audits merely check whether the financial reporting is up to snuff, and don’t evaluate mandate fulfilment or performance.  

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family vacation to Costa Rica in 2019 cost taxpayers nearly $200,000, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

According to one of the federation’s blog posts, the PM billed $196,137 for the trip that began on Dec. 20, 2019 and lasted 16 days. The majority of costs are attributed to multiple Canadian Forces business jet flights. ...

Records show six Challenger 604 jet flights were in the air during the trip for about 34 hours. According to a National Defence Cost Factors Manual: Air Chapter from 2018-2019, it costs $5,543 an hour to operate such an aircraft.

The normal flight time for a round trip between Ottawa and San Jose, Costa Rica, is about 11 hours. The total flight cost, according to the federation, was $187,353.

The total cost climbed to $196,137, according to the CTF, after accounting for the costs of the flight crews staying at the San Jose Marriott and $1,235 in flight food bills.

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An ongoing anti-racist campaign launched late last year has cost taxpayers approximately $70,000 so far, according to the office of BC’s Human Rights Commissioner (BCOHRC) Kasari Govender.

“We have a legislative mandate to provide education to the province of B.C. on anti-racism and anti-discrimination. It is one of our core functions,” the Office’s Acting Director of Communications Elaine O’Connor told True North. 

I can do that for free.

Racism is bad!

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Canada is already awash in trees:

The tree-planting spree, spread over a decade, is supposed to start in the spring and cost $3.16 billion over that time, based on federal estimates.

Getting to the 2030 target means planting about 200 million trees a year more than the usual 600 million or so.

The spending watchdog's analysis suggests getting there is also going to require more money, about $2.78 billion more, bringing the overall cost closer to $5.94 billion.

The budget officer's report is based on a similar program the Ontario government ran, using the average per-tree cost and adjusting for inflation over the 10-year planting period.