It's Just Money

Budgets balance themselves, so I am told:

Billions spent on consultants have created a “shadow public service” unaccountable to taxpayers, a union executive yesterday told the Commons government operations committee. Federal departments and agencies spend $16.7 billion a year on consultants, by Treasury Board estimate: “This shadow public service plays by an entirely different set of rules.”

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Employees in the Ontario government are enjoying a wage premium and receiving more generous benefits over their private sector counterparts, a new study by think tank the Fraser Institute says.

Published on Jan. 24, the study finds that the wages of government workers in Ontario are 34.4 percent higher, on average, than wages in the private sector in 2021, based on aggregated data obtained from Statistics Canada’s monthly “Labour Force Survey” from January to December of 2021.

After adjusting for differences such as age, gender, education, type of work, industry, and occupation, workers in Ontario’s government sector are still paid 10.9 percent higher wages. When unionization is taken into account, the wage premium declines to 8.8 percent.

“At a time when governments are facing serious fiscal pressures, bringing government sector compensation in line with the private sector would help reduce costs without necessarily affecting services,” said study co-author Ben Eisen, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, in a news release the same day.

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There is no current estimate of how many billions were wasted on the costliest pandemic subsidy program, the Canada Revenue Agency yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. “It really was a first-time thing for everybody so there’s lots of lessons to be learned,” testified Revenue Commissioner Bob Hamilton: “It’s hard to say.”

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In the last two years alone, multiple Canadian federal governmental departments spent $39 million hiring contractors to comb through and censor documents requested by the public under the Access to Information Act. 

As per Blacklock’s Reporter, information revealed from an Inquiry of Ministry requested by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Kelly McCauley last June shows the large payouts to multiple firms and individuals. 

According to the Inquiry, “Each file is different based on the complexity and the volume of pages.” 

The Inquiry also said that some of the paid consultants have other “functions,” which include “file review and providing technical advice.” 

In one instance, Canada’s National Gallery of Canada paid out over $126,000 to a private consultant, Brenda Keen Consulting Incorporated of Nepean, Ontario, which was tasked with censoring documents over two years.  

Keen is a former federal employee. 

The Inquiry, however, did not say why current government employees were able to manage Access to Information requests.  

The $39 million, according to the Inquiry, went to “contracts provided to consultants related to the processing of requests made under the Access to Information Act since January 1, 2020.”  

An example of a large payment includes a $72,844 bill for one contractor for four months of work.  

Another contractor was paid $199,078 to process Department of Justice files, which amounted to 96,971 pages. This equals about $2 per page.  

The Inquiry claimed that contractors were brought in to reduce the “current backlog of Access to Information requests.” 

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In fiscal year 2022, long after the rest of the world had ended quarantine hotel restrictions and after the government had lifted travel restrictions, at one Calgary area hotel, the federal Liberal government spent $6,790,717.46 on lodging expenses for….

…..wait for it….

15 people.

That works out to $452,714.50 spent per person on a quarantine hotel after they ended most travel restrictions.

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The federal government paid over $6.7 million last year for COVID-19 quarantine rooms in a Calgary-area hotel used by only 15 travellers, according to an Inquiry of Ministry document recently tabled in the House of Commons.

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The Digital Citizen Contribution Program doled out $1.2 million to 16 projects earlier this month, to “support democracy and social cohesion.” In total, grant records show that the program has given away $15.1 million.

The program is part of the larger Digital Citizen Initiative, which is the money machine created by Canadian Heritage to “build an evidence-base to identify potential action and develop future policy-making” to regulate online information. The government has so far earmarked $31 million for the Digital Citizen Initiative between 2022 and 2026.

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The way the program works is simple: Canadian Heritage publishes a list of research topics it plans to fund, organizations fill out an application form that describes their proposed projects and wait to hear if they’ve received the funding. Unlike the funding of university research, the department has direct control over who gets the money — and it can give that money to non-academics.

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The credit, announced last year, will allow multigenerational families to claim 15 per cent of up to $50,000 in eligible renovation and construction costs for a secondary unit, good for a maximum rebate of $7,500. The secondary unit must have a private entrance, as well as its own kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping area.

To qualify for the credit, the occupant of the secondary unit must be either a senior or disabled family member (with apologies to all the thirty-somethings living in their parents’ basements). The credit is slated to cost taxpayers $44 million over the next five years, according to a parliamentary budget officer (PBO) report this month.

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Trudeau, of course, isn’t the first prime minister to shell out taxpayer dollars for home renovations. First introduced as a temporary measure in 2009, the Harper government’s Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC) was snatched up by over three million Canadians, pumping an estimated $4.3 billion into a crisis-hit residential renovation sector. Harper subsequently pledged to make the popular credit permanent heading into his ill-fated 2015 re-election campaign.

While undoubtedly a hit with the HGTV crowd, Harper’s home renovation credit was less well received in progressive circles. The editorial board of the Liberal-friendly Globe and Mail wrote in 2015 that the credit was a “regressive” and “economically illogical” measure that would amount to “a permanent tax break for homeowners” bankrolled by renters. “Absent a repeat of the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” the board continued, “there’s no logic in reintroducing this crisis measure.”

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Surely, the same exact things can be said about the Trudeau government’s new tax credit. The nation’s housing market may be softening, but we’re still nowhere near Great Recession territory. And renters are, once again, the one’s getting shafted by yet another regressive housing policy. The rather meagre credit will likewise do little to make housing more affordable in Canada — $7,500 is barely enough to install a new gas stove in nana’s suite (gotta act quick before those go of the market, nana).

Nor does the credit fill a major unmet demand among Canadians. Multigenerational households may be on the rise, but this isn’t by choice. According to a study published just last month, 70 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 28 hope to own a single-family home one day. (As the youngest child of well-intentioned but overbearing South Asian immigrant parents, I couldn’t agree more). Rather than shoehorning Canadians into multigenerational living arrangements, the Trudeau government would be well-advised to take broad-based action to reverse our housing affordability crisis.

Or we should stop expecting these incompetent @$$holes to fix these problems they are clearly not qualified to fix, but, instead, stem the tides of inflation and people.

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The most persistent trend adding to inflation is the transition to “green energy,” which “raises costs,” according to a new Bank of Canada staff discussion paper.

“The 2021–22 Surge in Inflation” says that Canada has undergone the most pronounced surge in inflation in the 2021–2022 fiscal year since the 1970s.

A dollar in 1970 was equivalent to about $7.44 in purchasing power today, according to the Canada Inflation Calculator, based on Statistics Canada consumer price index (CPI) data.

This is an increase of $6.44 over 53 years. And it means that today’s prices are on average 7.44 times as high as prices were in 1970, and that a dollar in 2023 only buys 13.44 percent of what it was able to buy in 1970.

“In late 2022, inflation in Canada and other countries remained too high,” said the BoC paper. It noted that core inflation measures for Canada in September 2022 ranged from 4.7 percent to 6 percent, with October 2022 CPI inflation at nearly 7 percent (6.9 percent).

“The slowest but perhaps the most persistent trend is associated with the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to green energy,” said the paper.

“The transition requires an immense reallocation of investments, which raises costs due to higher demand for new investments and lack of investment supply into fossil fuel production,” said the central bank.

The paper said the cost pressures are exacerbated by “the long time required to build green energy infrastructure, further boosting prices for fossil fuels,” which results in higher energy prices.

This will also “contribute to challenges for monetary policy to keep inflation on target over the long term,” said the paper.

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McKinsey Investigation:

What justifies a contract for McKinsey till 2100.

OUTRAGEOUS! pic.twitter.com/6EIgT9xIHp

— Alexandra Lavoie (@ThevoiceAlexa) January 31, 2023

Canadian fiduciary sense is summed up thusly: