Your Idiot, Wasteful, Tone-Deaf Government and You

The kleptocrats at work:

Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis is criticizing the Liberal government for providing nearly half a million dollars to the World Economic Forum (WEF) to produce an environmental report promoting the carbon tax.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid the WEF nearly $500,000 “of Canadian taxpayer money for the New Nature Economy Report justifying his carbon tax,” Ms. Lewis says in a March 18 social media post. “Global interest groups should not be trusted to care about the prosperity of Canadians.”

Ms. Lewis has been the foremost critic of the WEF within the Conservative ranks. She has routinely unearthed information about cooperation between Ottawa and the WEF through access-to-information requests available to MPs.

Ms. Lewis obtained information about the report through an order paper she submitted in June 2023. She asked for details about all federal government engagements with the WEF, including contracts, transfer payments, and memoranda of understanding.

Government departments provided their consolidated responses in an inquiry of ministry filed in September. Analysis of the records shows Ottawa has sent nearly $23.5 million to the WEF since 2015.

The WEF is a global think tank that hosts events with the world’s most powerful figures from politics and industry. It says its mission is to “improve the state of the world” and to “shape global, regional and industry agendas.”

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Federal employees typically answer to seven levels of management, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. “Yes, there is room to reduce,” said Giroux, who earlier calculated payroll costs at a record $67 billion a year: “An employee can have seven levels of management above them.”

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The focus of that first meeting, the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), was a signature Liberal campaign initiative to which then-finance minister Bill Morneau pledged $35 billion of federal money in 2016. Envisioned as a public-private investment vehicle, Morneau told Canadians that each of those dollars would trigger $4 to $5 in private funding from institutional investors such as pensions.

He also promised that “transformative projects” would be funded over the next 10 years that might not otherwise get built, creating thousands of jobs. Priority projects were to include public transit, green infrastructure, clean power, broadband and trade and transportation.

But by 2021, four years after its launch, just $1.23 billion, or 3.5 per cent of the $35-billion mandate, had been invested, according to a March 23, 2021 report published by Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux, who noted there was no evidence that private investment had been leveraged at all and that the CIB had been operating like any other government agency.

One of the earliest Trudeau government fumbles in courting the big pensions, according to a source who is still active in the pension world and spoke on condition that they would not be identified, was that it began with the expectation that the large pension funds would invest billions of dollars in early-stage projects — such as building overflow channels to stop the Red River from flooding Winnipeg every year — that would take years to generate revenue.

“I would say in general that this was thrown together without much thought and they seemed to be unaware that pension funds had not been involved in greenfield infrastructure projects,” said the source, using the industry term for projects built from scratch.

“Pension funds almost exclusively invest in operating assets,” he said, a key fact that appeared to be lost on government.

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ArriveCan is next SNC-Lavalin/Aga Khan/WE "charity" scandal ... :

A lead ArriveCan supplier yesterday acknowledged he and a business partner became millionaires under lucrative federal contracts one MP calculated at $2,600 an hour. Kristian Firth, partner in GC Strategies Inc. of Woodlawn, Ont., justified fees by explaining he occasionally worked weekends and evenings: “The government obviously values what myself and my firm and what firms like us do.”

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Anthony told MPs he handled security clearance for subcontracts and arranged for contracts with other government departments and private firms. He said the scandal over the runaway ArriveCan costs and the questionable contracting awarded for the app’s development has done permanent damage to his life.

“This will have an irreparable impact on me and my family’s futures,” he said. “A career I spent 20 years building has been ruined.”

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach said he found it incredible that as a 50-per-cent owner of the company, Anthony wouldn’t have read the reports that had led to his business being cut off from government contracts.

“Reports that have been written by some of the main watchdogs who work on behalf of the Canadian public and they’ve raised major red flags about your corporate practices, of a company that you’re one of the two principals of and you haven’t even read the reports?”

Bachrach said it seemed as though Anthony had checked out of his own company.

“I would be incredibly concerned that you’re not even following the bouncing ball when it comes to these major allegations against your company’s business practices. Can you see why that would be a concern?”

Anthony simply said “sure,” to Bachrach’s questions, one of many one-word answers he provided.

Anthony’s partner, Kristian Firth, testified at the same committee on Wednesday and said the auditor general’s figure that GC Strategies had received $19.1 million is wrong.

He claimed that the company received approximately $11 million for ArriveCan and earned approximately $2.5 million after paying the rest to subcontractors.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis also focused in on Anthony’s testimony that he had not read the auditor general’s report. He accused Anthony of lying to the committee.

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“This report is feeding into an RCMP investigation that could result in criminal charges against your long-term business partner and against you, Mr. Anthony. This report is merely 36 pages, and at no point did you think ‘maybe I should read this’?”

Anthony insisted he was being truthful and said he avoided reading the report because of the stress.

“I am not lying to this committee,” he said. “It was against my doctor’s wishes for me to be working. I have not been working since the start of December.”

Anthony later said he did not intend to read the auditor general’s report in the future.

“The damage has already been done for me.”

Poor baby ... 

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Videos of massive crowds lining up for job fairs in the GTA and elsewhere in Ontario show just how tough the job market has become.

With minimal spots to fill and hundreds — sometimes thousands — of people competing for those few roles, it’s been a grind out there for prospective employees.

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Wait - where are they getting the money for this?:

The Ontario government is facing a class action lawsuit for the cancellation of the province's basic income pilot project — an abrupt move that some say caused significant emotional and financial harm.

In a statement Tuesday, Toronto law firm Cavalluzzo LLP says the class action suit, brought forward by 4,000 people who took part in the project, claims damages for the sudden cancellation in July 2018 by Doug Ford's government. The lawsuit is seeking damages of up to $200 million.

As part of the pilot, about 4,000 participants in Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay earning less than $34,000 received just under $17,000 annually. The amount decreased by 50 cents for every dollar an individual earned through work and couples received a little more than $24,000. People with disabilities received an additional $6,000.

"Basic income gave me dignity, it gave me hope, it gave me financial stability," said Lindsay resident Dana Bowman in the statement.

 

It was welfare.

You should be cut off.