Good

A paralysed government can't do much harm:

Treasury Board President Anita Anand is warning that if the House of Commons doesn’t get back to regular business, some government departments might be in financial trouble.

On Monday, Anand tabled a supplementary estimates request for $21.6 billion to fund programs including housing, dental care and the national school food program.

One of the biggest-ticket items is $970.8 million for compensation adjustments for civil servants as a result of collective bargaining agreements.

But some of the money requested by the government is to repay departments for what they’ve already spent, and it must be voted on by Dec. 10 in line with House procedures.

The civil servant compensation adjustments, for instance, included one-time lump sum payments issued between April 1 and July 31 of this year.

“The smaller departments would be impacted disproportionately earlier on,” Anand told reporters Tuesday.

“We are OK for the next three to four weeks, but we need to make sure that money flows to those smaller departments and then ultimately the larger departments, which also fuel so much of the government’s and the country’s business.”

 

Waste your own money, Anand.