Former PM, GAC's $51K-per-month booze bill tops annual gov't waste awards

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OTTAWA — Global Affairs Canada’s $51K-per-month booze bill, a $65K phone line to call a river, and a $77K provincial government travel junket that resulted in travel ads insisting Saint John was New Brunswick’s capital.

These are among the winners of this year’s Teddy Waste Awards, an annual “celebration” of government waste held by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The big winner of this year’s golden pig, however, was former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who snagged the federation’s lifetime achievement award.

“Trudeau added 99,000 extra bureaucrats, billed taxpayers $6,000 per night for a hotel suite in England and spent six figures on airplane food after the government promised to cut those costs,” said federation federal director Franco Terrazzano, who pointed out it took former PMs 150 years to rack up $600 billion in federal debt — something Trudeau managed to achieve in less than a decade.

The City of Calgary won in the municipal waste category for the city’s latest public art blunder — a $65,000 phone line that allowed residents to listen to a recording of the city’s Bow River.

“If someone wants to listen to a river, they can go sit next to one, but the City of Calgary should not force taxpayers to pay for this,” the federation’s Alberta director Kris Sims told the Calgary Herald this week.

Other nominees included Ottawa’s $160K “night mayor,” and $318K spent in Saskatoon to develop a name and “feel” for the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

Provincially, New Brunswick Tourism won for a $77K tourism junket to Europe to promote the province as a travel destination.

Unfortunately, the associated ad campaigns were full of erroneous information about the province, including claims that Saint John was the capital and largest city in New Brunswick — while in reality, Fredericton is capital and Moncton its largest city.

Other ads invited travellers to visit the New Brunswick Museum, Martello Tower and the Cherry Brook Zoo — attractions that have long closed.

Other nominees include Quebec Premier François Legault for purchasing a framed Guy Lafleur jersey with provincial money, Manitoba Health for commissioning a breast cancer awareness campaign criticized for its vulgarity, and BC Rail for paying two executives $500K in salary to run a railway without trains.

Global Affairs Canada spending over $3 million on alcohol since 2019 — a story first published in the Toronto Sun — won the government agency the federal prize.

“These bureaucrats seem like they’re having a good time, but what value are taxpayers getting from this huge booze bill?” Terrazzano told the Sun last year.

“Billing taxpayers $51,000 a month for booze is mind boggling, but what’s even crazier is this tab is just for one government department.”

Runners-up include the Department of National Defence spending $34.8 million on sleeping bags not designed to handle Canadian winters, Parks Canada spending four years and $10,000 to kill a single bullfrog, and Statistics Canada spending nearly a million dollars to produce a podcast that only managed to garner less than 230 subscribers.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume

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