AGAR: Needless government spending a three-ring circus

Published Sep 23, 2024  •  2 minute read

Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Photo by Ashley Fraser /POSTMEDIA

Just because government is often a circus doesn’t mean all the players are clowns.

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Bryan Passifiume’s piece in the Sun is headlined, “Bureaucrats spend $700K in concert, circus, event tickets … Expenses include $24,484 for tickets to Come from Away, staged in the United States, Japan and Australia.”

It is easy to knee-jerk into righteous anger over how the government spends our money and that criticism of the government is most often correct.

Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano told the Toronto Sun, “How does spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on tickets to events in Canada and around the world help Canadians who are struggling to afford their rent and grocery bills?”

It probably doesn’t. But it might.

The London Free Press reported, “Administrators with the cash-strapped Thames Valley District school board spent nearly $40,000 on a three-day retreat at the Toronto Blue Jays stadium hotel amid a $7.6-million budget deficit that’s prompted deep cuts, including to funding for kids’ field trips.”

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Was it just coincidental the Jays were playing at home all three days?

The bill included transportation, hotel rooms, meeting spaces and food expenses.

Transportation and hotel is not an expense incurred when the meetings take place at home in the school board offices.
Ditto meeting room expenses.

Ditto food, unless you order in sandwiches and work through lunch. The taxpayers might not grieve that.

Trustee Beth Mai, chair of the school board, said, “This has been a learning experience for the (school board) and will not happen again,”

If that is a lesson you need to learn in 2024, you are either unqualified to be a trustee — trusted with money and education — or it is a disingenuous statement designed to get people to stop talking about it.

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“It’s all good now. By golly, as of today, we know what we are doing.”

That kind of self-regarding largesse is always wrong on the public’s dime.

Now, back to the money spent by the feds going to concerts, circuses and events.

Perhaps they were spiffing themselves as did the Thames Valley District school board.

But I am willing to ask at least what the purpose of the expense was. What was the context?

If an ambassador in Japan took some people who might do business with Canada in a way that does benefit our country to see the hottest Canadian play — Come From Away — can that be justified in the same way salespeople from private companies do the same thing?

If salespeople from my radio station took a CEO and spouse to Come From Away and ultimately, along with basic sales ability and proposals, got that CEO to sign off on a big advertising contract I would say, “Money well spent.”

Export Development Canada’s expenses include $25,000 for two tickets to attend the 2024 Indigenous Prosperity Forum Gala Banquet and $45,000 for eight tickets to the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s annual Black and White Gala.

How are those events worth as much as $12,500 a ticket, other than for political correctness points that accrue to the attendee and not the public who paid for it?

Political leaders often take economic development trips.

When is it worth it? Can the government justify the expenses reported above?

We pay for the circus, but we don’t see the show.

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