99 furðuleg atríði sem hið opinbera í Kanada eyddi fé í

Þó að ástandið á fjármálafyrirtækjum sé skárra hér í Kanada en víða annarsstaðar og ríkisfjármálin í þokkalega standi, sem reyndar stefnir í öfuga átt þó, er ekki þar með sagt að hið opinbera sé að eyða peningum skattgreiðenda í allra handa vitleysu.

Kandíska tímaritið Macleans hefur að undanförnu birt greinaflokk sem heitir 99 stupid things the government spent your money on.  Greinarnar eru nú orðnar 4. og búið að birta 73 atriði.  Hér má finna greinarnar I, II, III, IV

Ég vona svo sannarlega að sambærileg dæmi sé ekki að finna í útgjöldum hins opinbera á Íslandi. Það er þó eitthvað sem segir mér að mannfólkinu svipi saman í þessum efnum sem öðrum. En það er alltaf hægt að vona.

Á meðal þeirra undarlegri finnst mér:

Bailouts on ice: Abbotsford, B.C., dished out $1.3 million to the owners of the Abbotsford Heat AHL hockey team as part of a 10-year agreement guaranteeing the money-losing team that it won’t actually suffer any financial losses. The problem is that nobody buys tickets. They might as well. One way or the other the people of Abbotsford are going to pay.

Sand trap: The City of Windsor spent $1 million to rebuild sand traps at the Roseland Golf and Curling Club, which the city owns.

Quebec paid $1.2 million to send transport officials overseas to study the latest in engineering technology, including trips to Burkina Faso and Algeria.

There’s lots of talk in Ottawa about cutting fat, but since when did that mean government getting into the weight-loss business? In October, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) invested $249,000 in Newtopia, a company based in Vaughan that offers genetic testing for obesity and online weight-loss counselling. Founder Jeff Ruby was ecstatic: “Banks can give us money, but the government of Canada provides great credibility.”

In July, Ottawa poured $190,000 into New Brunswick doughnut maker Mrs. Dunster’s—famous for making its doughnuts out of pure lard. Meanwhile, the provincial government is putting together a program to fight obesity.

A 2011 audit of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation uncovered millions in questionable contract spending, such as the $90,000 the agency spent for Christmas parties in 2008 and 2009, complete with a chocolate fountain, crème brûlée, grilled calamari and mussels.

Despite the millions of dollars provinces spend to prop up their wine industries, the feds handed $1.05 million to Calona Wines of B.C. to double the output of its boxed wines, even though 80 per cent of the wine it sells is imported.

New Brunswick taxpayers learned they would have to pay $11 million over a failed job-creation plan involving a Norwegian solar company. The province owes Umoe Solar the money for land and equipment after plans for a $600-million solar panel plant fell through in May 2010. Three months earlier, the federal government had said it would grant the company $3 million to support R & D work.

Ontario’s green energy plan was supposed to boost employment, but according to the province’s auditor general each new “green job” that’s created costs the province between $100,000 and $300,000, and also results in the loss of two to four other jobs as a result of higher electricity prices.

Quebec gave IQT, a U.S.firm, $670,000 to set up two call centres in the province in 2000, but in July, ITQ shut its doors, laying off 1,200 employees. The reason: Nashville offered it $1.5 million to move south.

Ottawa awarded $87,000 to PurGenesis Technologies of Montreal to commercialize its “line of anti-aging products based on certified organically grown baby spinach leaves.” The money followed an earlier government “contribution” of $282,000 in 2009.

Even as Rio Tinto Alcan and Alcoa said they would invest $15 billion to modernize operations in Quebec, the province and Ottawa still gave the industry $125,000 for a trade show.

The feds granted a company called Solarpro $54,000 to commercialize tanning beds.

Camp Canada: About 115 new Canadians were taken on a camping trip partly funded by taxpayers. The Learn to Camp project aims to teach the recent immigrants how to “put up a tent, how to start a campfire, [and] how to make some S’mores,” according to a Parks Canada spokesperson. There’s still no word on exactly how much it will cost, or how many cases of Molson will be consumed.

Nature overload: It’s no secret that Canadians love the outdoors. We have to. There’s just so damn much of it. Yet, Environment Canada still spent $456,000 on a national survey on the importance of nature to Canadians—the fifth time it has done so since 1981. Have our attitudes about trees, lakes and birds really changed that much over the years?

Uphill ride: Montrealers came to the rescue of Bixi, the troubled bike-sharing program the city owns, with a $108-million bailout package made up of loans and loan guarantees. The non-profit, money-losing company has faced problems as it expanded to Toronto and Ottawa, but Mayor Gérald Tremblay insisted taxpayer money would all be paid back once Bixi becomes an international bike-sharing powerhouse. Not so fast, warned the city’s auditor general. Montreal taxpayers could suffer significant losses, he said, because “basic rules of management were neglected or circumvented.”

Something fishy: The feds gave $717,000 to establish the International Centre for Sturgeon Studies at Vancouver Island University, the latest in a string of government funding announcements, going back a decade, all meant to jump-start the industry. To date there is only one producer of farmed sturgeon in Canada.

Barking mad: The City of Toronto tore up a dog park it had built just two years earlier at a cost of $40,000 after several nearby homeowners complained of the noise.

Nothing ads up: The Canada Revenue Agency spent $750,000 on an ad campaign warning against “under the table” home renovations, then gave another $113,000 to a polling firm to find out the ads “did not have a statistically significant impact.”

Canada donated $36 million to China, a country that’s accumulated US$3 trillion in foreign reserves.

Tunnel vision: Calgary must spend $1.6 million on “public art” to go on the walls of a new traffic tunnel being built under the airport runway, simply because of a rule that says all projects must include an art component.

A dog-eat-dog world: It was revealed that the federal government, through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, gave more than $180,000 in loans and grants to a Sydney, N.S., concert promoter to bring Snoop Dogg to the city to perform in 2010.

Rock bottom: U2 isn’t just a rock band, it’s a billion-dollar, multinational corporation. But when Bono and crew swung through Montreal for a two-night show in July for their 360° tour (which incidentally earned them $740 million worldwide), the city subsidized the event by spending $450,000 to build a temporary stadium just for the show.

Graffiti for hire: Montreal budgets about $150,000 annually to pay for murals painted by graffiti artists around the city. Another $1 million is spent helping boroughs get rid of murals that were, um, painted for free.

Thin ice: Ottawa’s National Capital Commission installed seven new ice shacks along the Rideau Canal for skaters to lace up in. Each shack cost $750,000. By comparison, the average house price in Ottawa is $360,000.

Howling mad: Ottawa gave $1.5 million to Parc Safari zoo in Hemmingford, Que., in part to build a “wolf observation tunnel.”