So the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (let’s just call them ‘Friends’) are a little upset with us for upturning some of their financial dealings with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We sort of expected that.

In their response we were delighted to read that contrary what we had been told by the CBC, “All members of the Friends’ Steering Committee gave explicit written permission to the CBC to release the requested information.”

This new information made our day, as we therefore expect the CBC to provide us with the 85 redacted pages from the Access to Information (ATI) documents.

We were quick to get on the phone with the CBC’s ATI department today to find out if we had been incorrectly informed, or to find out when we can receive the redacted information.

The CBC assured us that, “Names not included in the received documents did not give clear consent for disclosure.” In short, the CBC required explicit consent to disclose these people’s financial dealings, and did not receive it from everyone, contrary to what our Friends said. At least, the CBC doesn’t think that it did.

In short, somebody has some splainin’ to do. There are therefore three foreseen possibilities:

1)   As Friends claim, they all did give consent, but the CBC lost the letters and will provide us with the 85 pages that are currently redacted;

2)   As Friends’ claim, they all did give consent, but four of the letters were simultaneously lost in the mail. They can easily reprint the letters and send them to the CBC so that they can provide us with the information that is currently blanked-out; or

3)   If in fact consent was not given – which would be somewhat at odds with statements on the Friends’ website – then they surely won’t want to be spreading terminological inexactitudes and will wish to rectify this. That would happen by either explaining why they continue to refuse consent, or rectify this by finally giving it.

When we asked the CBC about the one sample letter of consent provided by the Friends, the CBC responded that there was confusion surrounding another Ian Morrison by the same name, and promised to promptly investigate the matter.

We really hate to come between friends, but we love Access to Information. The CBC and the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting need to work this consent thing out and provide the missing 85 pages.

• $84-thousand for lapel pins
• $40-thousand for engraved, bamboo and eco pens
• $14-thousand for zipper pulls
• $29-thousand for water pitchers and custom bottles
• $4-thousand for coffee mugs
• $17-thousand for golf shirts
• $22-thousand for day bags

Now, nobody expects President Obama to be served his morning coffee in a Styrofoam cup, but were the $4-thousand for custom cups really necessary?

At a summit that trumpeted budget austerity to slash their red-ink strained deficits, it was more than a little odd that taxpayers were billed $40-thousand for an assortment of engraved, bamboo and eco pens. That, when the red Bic pens that write our budgets would have done just fine.

Summits shouldn’t be done on the cheap, but neither should they be used as an excuse for “stimulus” spending (read pork) or for showing off. Showing restraint at an international summit focused on cutting government profligacy might have lent it’s tough words more credence.

The received ATI from DFAIT can be found here.

Cross posted at taxpayer.com/blog

Should the political will exist, Ottawa can eliminate its deficit in two years without raising taxes, or even draconian cuts for that matter. Still reductions will be required, to the tune bringing spending levels to $18 billion below 2010-11 levels by 2012-13. That would return program spending to levels seen between 2008-09 and 2009-10. Not radical, but very different from the current course of perpetual deficits and increasing government that we are charted on.

The CTF’s Zero in Two: Deficit Action Plan details how this can be done while not raising taxes or rescinding scheduled future reductions:

• Eliminate corporate welfare, regional development agencies, bio-fuel subsidies, most arts and language subsidies and other select grants and contributions.

• Privatize Atomic Energy of Canada, Canada Post’s Purolator Courier and VIA Rail. Also, end taxpayer support for the CMHC. Also, end any financial support for Canada Post.
• Reduce most departmental budgets from 10-25% and freeze remaining budgets for two years.
• Reduce the Equalization Program by 10% annually over two years and assist recipient provinces in paying down respective debts in lieu of cash-transfers.
• Continue growth in Health and Social Transfers and National Defense spending at a reduced rate.
• Pass a Taxpayer Protection Act to ban future deficits and tax increases without an explicit mandate to do so given in an election or referendum.
• Pass a Debt Retirement Act with a schedule for making Canada a debt-free jurisdiction.
• Prevent a further EI payroll-tax hike by eliminating non-insurance based EI programs.
• Eliminate the Vote Tax – per vote subsidy.

cross-posted at taxpayer.com/blog

“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he spend $60 billion or only 50?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement and stimulus I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an overtaxed country with a half trillion dollars in debt already and growing, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, taxpayers?”

That’s not a direct quote from Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, but it’s close enough. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) certainly doesn’t feel lucky about our prospects as a country if current spending continues unabated. While we already owe a massive sum to our bankers: $500 billion in accumulated debt, the new debt being added via the deficit announced in the last budget, will amount to more than $10,200 per taxpayer between now and 2014. That figure will continue to balloon as interest on the debt begins to compound. Canada is adding more debt right now than was added during both World Wars combined, even after adjusting for inflation. You can see our national debt rack up in real time at www.debtclock.ca.

For those not feeling so lucky, the CTF has produced a Zero in Three Deficit Action Plan to balance the budget in three years. This can be done through a combination of spending freezes, trimming of department budgets and where necessary, reductions. Politicians may excuse themselves from any spending cuts in claiming that a recovery in revenues will balance the budget, but quite simply, they’re wrong. Program spending has skyrocketed by more than 60 per cent in only six years – beginning long before so-call stimulus spending – and add to that the retirement of the baby boomers now beginning and Canada faces a structural deficit that will remain long after revenues recover.

The CTF’s plan would only reduce spending by 10 per cent, returning us to 2008 levels over three years finding a total of $35.8 billion in savings.  In addition to moderately trimming department budgets and accounting for already scheduled decreases in “stimulus,” the CTF plan would eliminate $5.5 billion in corporate welfare. This means turning off the taps to private corporations that subside on the taxpayer’s dime while at the same time resisting money-sucking schemes like Kyoto and Copenhagen that will create entire new bureaucracies and dependent faux-businesses.

Equalization eats up $14.8 billion every single year and has only served to make recipient provinces even poorer and more dependent. The CTF plan would convert this from a ‘federal welfare program’ to a program to help pay down provincial debts, and then reduce the amount provided by 10 per cent each year. That would provide cumulative savings of more than $1.4 billion every year while helping poorer provinces to become proudly self-sufficient again.

Since the creation of two new “regional development” agencies by the Harper government, every single area of the country now has a government agency designed to take money from one part of the country and redistribute it elsewhere. This nonsensical logic makes it low-hanging fruit for anyone serious about balancing the budget. Savings to the taxpayer: $1.2 billion every year.

Canada also has several crown corporations that eat up excessive amounts of money. While not all candidates made the list to be cut, those that did make the chopping block would save taxpayers at least $1.2 billion annually, not to mention one time reductions to our debt from the proceeds of selling them.

All told, there is an abundance of areas that the government can easily look to in order to get its finances under control. Even holding the line on spending – which it should have done when it come to power – won’t bring the books into black. Program spending was already at unsustainable levels when Prime Minister Harper came to power.

During the Trudeau and Mulroney years, the government books often showed the budget coming into balance without any cuts a few years down the road as revenues increased, yet they never did. The government today – with deficits on par with those prime ministers – is making precisely the same argument. They know, just as previous governments before, you can’t balance your budget by doing nothing.

The jig is up and we know what needs to be done, so come on Mr. Harper, make my day.

“I told you so” would be the likely response from a child towards what appears to be a 180-degree flip-flop on allowing the auditor-general (AG) to examine MP’s expenses. ‘Kicking and screaming’ would also be an apt description of how MPs were brought to their expected – but still pending – decision.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has campaigned hard to have these expenses opened up to the AG and is recognized as a leader in this fight. This has been done through tireless advocacy in the media, an online petition with nearly 10-thousand signatures with a supplementary Facebook group and by alerting the CTF’s 74,000 supporters to contact their MP directly.

Ottawa’s “bipartisan” (or “multi-partisan” to be technical)  consensus about keeping the AG out of their business was only politically convenient so long as all parties stood in union-like solidarity, refusing to cross the picket-line and abandon their comrades to ever-thinner numbers. Ottawa-washed MPs saw calls for openness by the AG, CTF and several media outlets as having no traction, that their constituents were “not interested.”

The thousands of angry callers to talk-radio stations and MP’s office, emails to Parliament Hill and letters to the editor have pushed a few rouge MPs to realize that their political skins are best served by transparency, and not in solidarity with secrecy.

As the trickle of these independent-minded MPs became a small stream and with the Bloc having already tossed its hat into the good-guys corner (who’d of seen that coming?) the federalist parties have now been forced to “reconsider” their decision. It is the height of political theatre that Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff is now inviting the AG to “meet with the Board of Internal Economy,” after she already did so and was soundly rejected by all three federalist parties just weeks ago. Mr. Layton has made similar statements about speaking with the AG again after his party  publicly slammed the door shut on Ms. Fraser’s investigation. Now the Tories have a “secret plan” to provide greater transparency in MP expenses. Read that last line back to yourself again. No. Your not crazy.

It is too soon to jump to conclusions as to if the proposals now being discussed behind closed doors are sufficient enough to hold MPs accountable for past spending, or if appropriate measures will be put in place to ensure that future spending is transparent and open (as in posted in detail, online), but it’s not too soon to speculate as to what the political ramifications are and/or will be:

1. A squandered political opportunity: Like previous audits in the UK, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, it is possible that there will be inappropriate expenses found from members in all parties. Because only the Bloc Quebecois can claim with a straight face to have supported an audit from an early stage, no other party will be able to wash itself from whatever might spray its way. Had for instance the NDP sided in favor of an audit when it had a chance to just the other week, it would rightfully be able to claim that despite any muck found, it was a willing partner in the push for openness. Because all federalist parties are only now (and still highly tentatively) coming around in favor of an audit, voters will see their revisited decision as being done so while kicking and screaming.
2. Open space for parties currently without seats: Any party not weighed down by refusing to allow an audit has the potential to tap into a deep vein of discontent, regardless of its ideological bend. Cue the Green Party. Whatever its far-out (or is that groovy?) policy suggestions, it – like the Bloc – can claim to be fresh and untouched. Western MPs should be particularly sensitive to perceptions of MPs representing Ottawa to the people, as opposed to MPs representing the people to Ottawa. Reference the UK Independence Party in 2009’s EU “parliamentary” elections.
3. Lower voter turnout: Yes, I’ll play that card as well. Everybody with a bone to pick with public policy makes the claim that [INSERT GRIEVANCE HERE] will further reduce turnout on e-day, but widespread perception (or reality) that there exists little or no difference between parties will do just that. Reference Ontario conservative voters in the 2003 and 2007 provincial elections.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The details of the “secret plan” to make MP expenses more transparent are not yet known and so we should not be too eager to declare victory, but we can take three lessons from the whole ordeal:

1. With only the rarest of exceptions, any politician or party will become disconnected from the people that they represent when they are in Ottawa for too long;
2. When all or most parties agree on something, be very suspicious; and that
3. Organized citizens can make a difference and wake politicians from their stupor if they rise up loudly and smartly enough. And yes, that was a shameless sales pitch for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

In the end, it is inevitable that MPs expenses be made public. The only question is how much fight it would take to make them so. Despite the adolescence of it, taxpayers are justified in saying, “I told you so.”

The following article that appeared in the Fall 2009 edition of The Taxpayer.

Published in The Taxpayer ~ On the Job: Internship program benefits students & CTF

The research branch of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) received a boost this past summer as two interns joined us in the fight for lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.

Amber Ruddy (Schomberg, Ontario) and Lisa Anthony (Toronto, Ontario) worked out of the CTF’s Ottawa office and helped research various federal, provincial and municipal matters. The pair increased our capacity to engage in in-depth and groundbreaking research that will ultimately help our advocacy efforts. They even ended up spearheading a few of their own ideas.

In return, Amber and Lisa were provided with a rare opportunity to work on the frontlines of the taxpayers’ movement and gain valuable research, communication and advocacy skills from the vantage point of the nation’s capital.

Here is a summary of their experiences in their own words.

Amber’s experience

“Having worked with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for the summer, I learned firsthand how to research and investigate stories of government waste.  For example: I was responsible for filing Access to Information requests, which are used to update reports and articles written by CTF spokespeople. As well, I helped create a database of the most ridiculous government handouts and grants in recent years. Collecting entries was not the hard part, deciding which ones made the cut was the challenge!

I also learned how to effectively write press releases and ensure they successfully reached the media. I drafted the initial version of the CTF’s press release which called on MPPs in Ontario to return to the legislature and order Toronto city workers back to work. Building on this, I created and conducted a survey with media outlets that receive the CTF’s Let’s Talk Taxes commentaries. The survey provided feedback to all directors on how to make their bi-weekly commentaries more effective.

One of the most interesting projects I undertook was compiling a list of MPP and MLA pension plans across the country.  This chart (see the TaxFacts section at taxpayer.com) will be used as a reference tool by media, researchers, CTF staff and the taxpaying public at large. The CTF plays an important watchdog role.

I look forward to being able to apply the advocacy and research skills that I have learned at the CTF to a number of issue-based campaigns that I will be leading when I return to university in September.  Campuses in Canada are dominated by radical groups disconnected from reality. They routinely call for more government intrusion into our lives and more government confiscation from our wallets. Armed with what I have learned from working with the CTF, I will be leading the charge against these groups on campus.”

Lisa’s experience

“As I complete my Master’s Degree and consider future career opportunities, interning at the CTF gave me excellent practical experience as well as networking opportunities. Researching was a major component of my work at the CTF, which has provided me with extensive knowledge regarding specific and current government issues such as the debate surrounding Employment Insurance reform.

Further to this, I had the opportunity to explore issues that are not at the forefront of public and media attention, such as analysing the growing divide between private and public sector pension plans. These issues are significant to all Canadian taxpayers and I was pleased to help the CTF in its efforts.

The work experience and knowledge that I have gained from interning with the CTF has been invaluable in my professional and political life. Every day we see examples of government waste and misspending. Digging deeper into current issues and exploring the extent of government spending has motivated me to want to continue working on behalf of Canadian taxpayers in some form in the future.”

Applications

The CTF is accepting applications from students for internship positions that can be filled in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax.V

*Cross-Posted at taxpayer.com/blog

• $10,300 on a 2008 trip to Dublin and Copenhagen

• $8,893 squandered on airfare alone for a 2008 trip to Malaysia

• $8,323 blown on a 2007 trip to Geneva

• $7,140 minimum on a 2008 trip Vienna, of which the actual figures are not yet released

Canada’s chief censorship bureaucrat Jennifer Lynch has been busted by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) for wasting taxpayers’ money on expensive flights to international meetings of arguably little, none, or even negative value.

Using Access to Information & Privacy (ATIP) requests, the CTF has learned that Chief Commissar Lynch spent $8,323 on accommodations, meals and a business class flight for a junket to Geneva, Switzerland in 2007. The purpose of this was to meet with the likes of “human rights” officials from Algeria and Morocco as well as the Asia Pacific Forum, which is an umbrella organization that includes the likes of Jordan & Palestine.

In 2008, Lynch made another trip to Geneva at the cost of $8,083 for her business class airfare alone. Including her other costs, that trip cost more than $10,400. The purpose of her trip in this instance was a committee meeting linked to the UN “Human Rights” Council, which includes: Bangladesh, Cameroon, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and most importantly, Saudi Arabia. One must wonder why Canada would spend its money on and lend its reputation to a body made up of some of the world’s worse human rights violators.

If these countries have anything to learn from Lynch, it is only how to subvert human rights with more tact and subtly than their own traditional methods (guns and ropes).

Lynch had a busy year of meeting with other human rights defenders in 2008 however; also traveling to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia with a business class airfare of $8,893, plus all other expenses. This confab was hosted by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, which is a part of a government that – according to the US State Department – restricts freedoms of the press, speech and religion, including “barring Muslims born into Islam from to converting to another religion,” allowing religious courts to enforce apostasy cases under Shariah law. This country’s human rights example was on display just this summer when a woman was convicted by an Islamic Shariah court in Malaysia for drinking a beer, sentencing her to “six beatings by cane”.

But that’s little more than a transparent application of the same law that she used to prosecute Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

In what was an ironic travel destination, Commissar Lynch traveled to Dublin, Ireland and Copenhagen, Denmark at the cost of $8,087 for her airfare (business class), totalling more than $10,300 after expenses. For those who need their memories jogged, Denmark is where a set of innocent cartoons were originally produced and printed that sparked world-wide riots by religious extremists. Joining the extremists in calling for the prosecution of any who dare reprint them, “Human Rights” Commissions in Canada attempted to censor Ezra Levant, who had them printed in the magazine for which he was editor.

The information (above) did not come easily to CTF researches however; as the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission stalled, blocked and dodged its several ATIP requests beyond the regular legal bounds. By law, government entities must provide the information within 30 days of the request being filed. Lynch and her gang only coughed it up after 51 days, but not without trying to put it off even longer, complaining that providing the information on time would “unreasonably interfere” with their operations. To date, an ATIP request filed in August for a Lynch flight to Vienna – for which Proactive Disclosures indicate she spent a minimum of $7,140 on airfare alone – has yet to be released.

Sizable inconsistencies were found in the costs of two of Lynch’s flights provided to the public through Proactive Disclosures, and the actual costs of the flight as discovered through Access to Information Requests.

With the cooperation of some officials, the CTF was able to confirm that much of the inconsistencies in this reporting – at times over to $3,000 difference – were due to Lynch only posting the Canadian portion of what was paid for her tickets, omitting the total cost. The difference in total cost was largely made up of reimbursements from international organizations that Canadians taxpayers fund, thereby allowing Lynch to only post the direct cost to the Canadian taxpayer and fly under the radar. That is until the CTF began to snoop.

Canadian taxpayers should be up in arms over any bureaucrat spending this kind of money and playing tricks – however legal – to minimize what the public sees in costs. That it is being done by bureaucrats that censor Canadians and feel the need to meet with tyrannical regimes for international confabs is even more outrageous. If the federal government is serious about curtailing its record deficits that have now pushed our national debt over the $500 billion mark, grounding censorship bureaucrats like Lynch would be a great place to start.

Contacting the CHRC’s ATIP Coordinator , the folks at Canada’s enlightened censorship bureaucracy reacted with hostility upon learning who was calling (the CTF), refusing to discuss the documents outside of a formal complaint process on paper.  As some readers will know, a complaint was already filed against the CHRC for failing to respond on time and its excuse that providing information would “unreasonably interfere” with its business (namely, censoring the opinions of free Canadians).

Normally, government outfits have up to 30 days to respond to an ATIP request.  The CHRC took 51 days.  With every other department which was contacted by the research wing of the CTF, the respective ATIP Coordinator has been willing to discuss the documents to ensure that all is included and clear.

Not so with Jennifer Lynch and her lackeys.  Normally however; the CHRC only tries to block information from coming from Canadians.  Now it appears that it is trying to block information from its organization to taxpayers.

The Thought Police can block, bob, weave and duck as long as they like, but we’re not going to give up any time soon.