But it is YOURS:
Updated expense numbers put the cost of the Trudeau Liberals’ three-day affordability-focused cabinet retreat last summer at just under half-a-million dollars, including more than $50,000 on a banquet.
Parliament expected 700 delegates to attend the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly, which took place in Vancouver from June 30 to July 4. The conference is usually held in Europe, where most of its members are based.
Only 365 delegates ended up attending, and not all of them stayed at the hotels the government selected. That left taxpayers on the hook for 1,400 overnight stays worth $596,000 in total — an average of $425 a night.
Audio-visual costs for the conference were also higher than expected, contributing to the event going $649,000 over the original budget of $1.8 million.
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Interim federal Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein authored a great moment in Canadian political accountability on Tuesday in explaining to a parliamentary committee when and why he might investigate a very generous gift to the prime minister from a friend. (Gifts from friends are explicitly allowed for in the Conflict of Interest Act.) The gift would have to be “really exceptional,” he suggested, like “a Ferrari,” or “$1 million,” to trigger an investigation.
You can get two Ferrari 296s for $1 million. Or a Daytona SP3 for around $2.5 million. It’s a very confusing standard.
Not rising to this “exceptional” level, apparently, is the free nine-day vacation in a luxury Jamaican villa the Trudeau clan enjoyed over the Christmas break, with a retail cost of around $84,000, courtesy of family friends who own the estate.
“This is a true friend, who has no relations with the government of Canada,” von Finckenstein told the committee (read: unlike the Aga Khan, whom von Finckenstein’s predecessor Mary Dawson found not to have been a real-enough friend to escape her wrath). “What we have here is clearly a generous gift, but it’s between people who are friends and I don’t see why, just because they’re well off, they can’t exchange gifts.”
Leaving aside what the prime minister is allowed to do with his truly rich true friends, it remains utterly astonishing to me that Justin Trudeau or someone with an ounce of sway in his office wouldn’t put a stop to this conspicuously consumptive behaviour as a matter of choice.
He does it because he can.
Canada is not Romanian enough.
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A federal homeless relief program paid millions to consultants, documents show. Overall spending on consultants jumped 13 percent last year despite cabinet’s promise to cut spending on consultants: “This is not about doing more with less.”
The federal government spent more than $199 million to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal employees, despite 95 percent already being vaccinated, according to records obtained through an Inquiry of Ministry.
“Measures were $85.7 million and $112.9 million in 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively,” Treasury Board President Anita Anand wrote in reference to the “Policy on COVID-19 Vaccination” for the core public administration, which included the RCMP.
Ms. Anand noted that of the $81.9 million allocated in 2021-2022 through the Treasury Board, $19.2 million was used for “procuring, warehousing and distributing COVID-19 rapid tests across the core public administration,“ as well as funding for legal services. Additionally, $3.4 million was allocated for ”Vote 1 Operating Authorities“ and more than $350,000 was given to ”Statutory Authority for Employee Benefit Plans.”
The Treasury Board did not vote on any allocations for enforcing vaccine mandates in the federal government during the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to the document. Information on “other associated costs incurred by departments, agencies, and Crown corporations that are not recognized through the following authorities are not available,” the Inquiry of Ministry said.
The figures were given in response to a request by Conservative MP Ted Falk last November about the total costs associated with implementing the vaccine requirement.
Back in October 2021, the Treasury Board announced all federal public servants and members of the RCMP would be required to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination by Oct. 29, and that any who failed to do so would be placed on administrative leave without pay on or after Nov. 15, 2021.
The Canada Border Services Agency has misled and “even lied” to Parliament over sweetheart contracting for the ArriveCan program, Conservative MP Kelly Block (Carlton Trail-Eagle Creek, Sask.) last night told the Commons government operations committee. Witnesses testified contracting was so irregular the $54 million program cost much more than it should have: “We have I think been misled and perhaps even lied to.”
Health Minister Mark Holland approved a multi-million dollar “wellness” program for department employees stressed by their job. Holland disclosed the in-house health care expenditure in a report to Parliament: “Topics covered during sessions include how to prevent burnout.”
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DOCUMENTS: $8 million cost of solar-powered warehouse at @RideauHall included $497,559 in architects’ fees. Cost breakdown is here: https://t.co/DZwXAyHbmw @PSPC_SPAC #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/78nQEVwTQi
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) February 2, 2024
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Statistics Canada data for 2021, the latest available, show that federal capital infrastructure project expenditures totalled $108 billion. Given that Ottawa bureaucrats are famous for mismanagement of virtually every project (e.g., the ArriveCAN app) does anyone doubt that many of those billions went to overruns resulting from a combination of sloppy design specifications and project mismanagement? And now the Trudeau government has added costly “social justice” obligations to its projects, including gender diversity, participation by ethnic minorities and disabled persons, as well as other elements of woke ideology.
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