CRA, dead raccoons, and $354K soccer balls top annual government waste awards

Canada Revenue Agency and the City of Toronto took home top honours at the CTF’s annual Teddy Waste Awards for government spending blunders

Published Jun 11, 2026  •  Last updated 17 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, hands out the federation's annual Teddy Waste Awards in Calgary, joined by event mascot Porky the Waste Hater Photo by Supplied /CTF photo

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OTTAWA — It was an awards ceremony where pork featured heavily on the menu.

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The Canadian Taxpayers Federation handed out their annual Teddy Waste Awards in Calgary on Wednesday night, as members of the taxpayers’ watchdog group feted the worst in wasted tax dollars.

“Bureaucrats at the CRA are winning a Teddy Award because they give out so many wrong answers that Canadians might as well ask a Magic 8 Ball for tax advice,” the federation’s Federal Director Franco Terrazzano said.

“Toronto bureaucrats spent taxpayers’ money on a plaque for a racoon that died 10 years ago so they’re getting a trophy they deserve: A Teddy Waste Award.”

Winners of the dubious honour get to hoist the Teddy Waste Award — a golden pig-shaped trophy named in honour of former Canadian Labour Relations Board Chair Ted Weatherill, who in the 1990s famously lost his job after accruing nearly $150,000 in expenses, including a $700 lunch for two in France.

Joining Terrazzano on the dais was Porky the Waste Hater — the CTF’s award mascot, dressed resplendently in a white-gloved tuxedo.

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Heritage Toronto’s Conrad the Raccoon plaque at 819 Yonge St. has a couple of admirers on Wednesday September 10, 2025. The city charity, which is responsible for historical plaques, put up the tribute to the internet sensation in July, intended as something it could make that would be “quick and fun.” Photo by Jack Boland/Toronto Sun

Dead raccoon plaque nets Toronto a golden pig

The City of Toronto won top honours for municipal government waste, after Heritage Toronto purchased a $1,936 commemorative plaque honouring the 10th anniversary of the death of Conrad, a raccoon whose remains lay on the sidewalk at Yonge St. and Church St. for nearly 15 hours before city crews bothered to remove it.

Other nominees include the City of Saskatoon’s $26,000 AI-powered sorting garbage can that only worked properly a third of the time; Cape Breton for spending $23,000 to police a peaceful protest objecting to the city’s complicity in the federal government’s gun grab; Richmond, BC for spending $78,000 to send a host of bureaucrats to deliver a 10-minute speech in Switzerland; Calgary for spending $4.8 million to rebrand itself “Blue Sky City;” and Sainte-Thérèse, QC, who spent $226,000 on a single-bid tender to install a single water slide.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s latest municipal Teddy Waste Award winner is the City of Toronto for wasting $2,000 on a plaque memorializing a raccoon that died in 2015. Photo by Toronto Sun graphic

Provincially, B.C. Premier David Eby was honoured for his province spending $354,000 on three “wood-leather” soccer balls.

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Other nominees include spending $7 million to fund questionable art projects — including $5,000 for a short film entitled “F–k,” Newfoundland for spending $756,000 on a report full of AI-hallucinated citations, a $190,000 gas price website created by Quebec that duplicated information already available on other sites, and Ontario for spending $3.7 billion for the Finch West LRT, which has travel times longer than the buses it was meant to replace.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s latest provincial Teddy Waste Award winner is the B.C. Premier David Eby for wasting $354,000 on three wood-leather scoccer balls for display purposes. And the CTF’s federal winner is the Canada Revenue Agency for only being accurate 17% of the time when responding to general individual tax questions. Photo by Toronto Sun graphic

Canada Revenue Agency wins for federal waste

Federally, the CRA was crowned the top pig because, despite spending millions to pay over 4,500 call centre agents, only gave taxpayers the correct answer 17% of the time — according to a scathing report from Canada’s auditor general.

Other federal nominees include the Finance Department for spending $12,000 to pay an outside contractor to write Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s budget speech, spending $307,000 to subsidize a politically-driven book publisher, and CBC for paying $93,000 to nominate itself for industry awards.

This year’s lifetime achievement award was handed out to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, who spend over $1 billion annually to produce studies of questionable import, including $105,000 on the life cycle of urban grocery carts, $20,000 on the gender politics of Peruvian rock music, and $74,000 on a study on Canada’s kink community.

“For answering questions that nobody asked and costing taxpayers $1 billion a year, the SSHRC is a worthy recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Waste,” Terrazzano said.

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