A decade of boondogglesThe government believes there's plenty more money left where this came from by Kathleen Harris, Free Press Parliamentary Bureau, Feb. 29, 04
There are so many scandals described. Please not that phrases are Harris's; I have simply tried to condense the ideas.
Choppers: killed a contract to replace the aging Sea King military helicopters, resulting in about $500 million in cancellation penalties
Pearson: paid $60 million -- including $15 million for lawyers -- for cancelling the privatization of Terminals 1 and 2.
Fuel Rebate:
A botched $1.4-billion heating fuel rebate program doled out cash to the wrong Canadians. Then-finance minister Paul Martin announced the gift just before the 2000 federal election, but the auditor general later discovered that as little as 18 per cent made its way to low-income Canadians. Some rebates went to dead people, prisoners and students who were living at home and didn't pay heating bills.
HRDC: $1 billion was mismanaged in job-creation grants in 2000. A recreation of the paper trail later found only a few million was disbursed improperly.
Challenger Jets: The Liberal government spent $101 million on luxury Challenger jets deemed unnecessary -- the purchase -- rushed through on the last day of the fiscal year in 2002 -- broke purchasing rules.
Gun Registry: Originally forecast to cost $2 million in 1995, the auditor general predicted in 2003 that actual costs would escalate to $1 billion by 2004-2005. Other independent calculations have suggested the costs actually have ballooned to $2 billion.
Radwanski: thousands of tax dollars in lavish lunches and luxury travel. Last year, the auditor general also found Radwanski and executive staff were improperly cashing out vacation, overbilling for expenses and creating a hostile work environment.
Sponsorship: The auditor general revealed as much as $100 million of the $250 million federal sponsorship program went to Liberal-friendly advertising firms for little or no work. . . established to boost the national profile in Quebec
Commentary:
That last phrase was a smoke-screen used to cover theft of money from Canadian taxpayers for Liberals and their friends.
Registering guns won't stop the wrong people from getting their hands on them. There should be stiffer sentences for weapons offenses with minimum jail time of at least five years. There is no truth in sentencing in Canada. The perpetrators are back on the streets before the police can finish the paperwork.
The scuttlebutt is that Charter of Rights eats up at least twice the manpower as was needed prior to its enactment; the police manpower has never kept pace, it seems -- which leaves the advantage to the crooks. The police have been left behind desks making sure the i's were dotted and the t's crossed--pushing paper--instead of out on the streets or investigating.
Novel Suggestion: Anybody who is convicted of a violent offence cannot have legal aid on their next trip through the revolving door. One free legal aid / customer. The lawyers will squawk but then, most don't give a hoot about victim's rights. It's a cash cow to some lawyers; note the lawyers' names that recur in news accounts of defence of criminals. You can figure it out. The money that was going to legal aid for the second, third, and fourth offences can be used to help victims recover -- if they were not murdered. A much better use of the funds!
