REGINA — For recipients or nominees for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s annual Teddy Waste Awards, it’s no laughing matter.
The only ones laughing — if anyone is — are members of the public after the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released its dubious awards list of “winners” this week, showcasing the most outrageous instances of government waste across the country.
The point is to make an example out of governments that are misusing tax dollars across Canada.
“It's extremely serious,” said Gage Haubrich, Prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “I think the best way that we want to talk about and show taxpayers that it's something to laugh at, or else you have to cry, because it is a clear misuse of all the hard-earned dollars that people send to governments across the country every year."
While Saskatchewan did see some examples of government waste, in the end, the competition was stiff due to the more laughable examples the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was able to dig up elsewhere in the country.
In the municipal category, Toronto won the prize for Heritage Toronto’s waste of $2,000 on a plaque to memorialize a raccoon.
“And it wasn't just a regular dead raccoon. It was a raccoon that had died 10 years ago,” Haubrich said.
“It became a small viral internet sensation. People were posting about this raccoon back in 2015, and then 10 years later for some reason the city of Toronto decided that it was a good use of $2,000 of taxpayer money to put up a plaque for that raccoon.”
Haubrich said it “doesn't seem to be what Toronto City Hall should be focused on and the city is dealing with huge tax hikes and many other things.”
But “it gets worse” at the provincial level, where B.C. Premier David Eby was awarded a Teddy Award after his government spent $354,000 on three soccer balls for display purposes.
“Now that's as bad as it is on its face until people realize that they're soccer balls that are made out of wood for display purposes only,” said Haubrich.
“So the B.C. government spent $354,000 developing three soccer balls made out of what they call wood leather that can't even be kicked. They're for display only … You'd think that the province that's hosting some of Canada's World Cup games would have a little more familiarity with a soccer ball and kind of understand that they don't cost $354,000 and that the main purpose of them is to be kicked, not for display. So it's a huge waste of taxpayer money.”
For the federal Teddy Waste Award category, the winner was the Canada Revenue Agency for its bad customer service.
“Essentially, the Auditor General found that the CRA's responses to taxpayers were only accurate about 17 per cent of the time on individual tax questions and just over half when it comes to business taxes,” said Haubrich. “So basically, the chances that you call the CRA and they give you the right answer is about one in five, which is ridiculous for a huge bureaucracy that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year. It just goes to show what are they doing all day.”
Finally, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council received its Lifetime Achievement Teddy Award.
“So the SSHRC is essentially a $1 billion grant slush fund for the federal government to hand out money to academics to do kooky research on all different manner of things,” Haubrich said.
He pointed to SSHRC having spent $105,000 studying the birth, life and death of a grocery cart, $17,500 on casual sex among young adults living in Jasper, and another $17,500 on a study about disgraced former rodeo princesses. “Academics can study all the kooky stuff that they want. They shouldn't be dipping into the taxpayer piggy bank to pay for them.”
In the end, Saskatchewan really didn’t stand a chance against these outrageous examples, although Haubrich said “we tried our best.”
In the provincial category, SK Arts was nominated for “spending millions of dollars a year on really weird art grants for artists to do things paid for by taxpayer money.”
Some of the examples included two separate grants of $6,000 and $5,000 to two people to “essentially take time off of work to play guitar.”
“They simply said in their grants they wanted to pay for rent and groceries, and taxpayers paid for that.” He also pointed to taxpayers having paid $1,000 for “someone to attend a drag-clown workshop in Ontario.”
But the most ridiculous grant, Haubrich said, was “a $757 grant to an artist, but that grant was to give them money to help them write another grant to get even more money.”
Not to be outdone was the City of Saskatoon, which was nominated in the municipal category for having decided to spend about $26,000 on an AI garbage can.
“I know AI is supposed to be all the rage, but I think that most people can figure out exactly where their garbage is supposed to go,” Haubrich said.
“We don't need an AI garbage can to help with that, but the problem is the AI garbage can that the City of Saskatoon bought gave people the wrong suggestion of where to put their garbage more than half the time. So it only had a 37 per cent accuracy rate, and it cost taxpayers $26,000.”
All in all, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is hoping the awards send a message to politicians.
"We hope by raising awareness to them, calling them out, giving them these awards for waste, that lawmakers think twice the next time they get a really weird expense request on their desk and they think, ‘I don't want to win a ‘Teddy’ for this,’ and that can save taxpayers some money," said Haubrich.
Haubrich also pointed out that while politicians can handle media questions or question period, they aren't so good at handling ridicule.
“Watch out how you're spending taxpayers' money, or next year you'll be getting a ‘golden pig’ statue for how you wasted it, and taxpayers across the country will ridicule you for how you wasted that money."
