Heh. A co-worker once told me that he never votes for the party in power. His claim was that every party in power does despicable things with that power and that should never be rewarded.
I do find it funny that the Sponsorship Scandal is used as some kind of holy grail.
"Conservatives muzzle environmental scientists": "Well at least they didn't have a sponsorship scandal!!"
"Conservatives waste millions on lavish G20 conference": "Well at least they didn't have a sponsorship scandal"
"Auditor general rips Conservatives for billions of dollars of cost overruns on F-35 jets contract" : "Well, at least they didn't have a sponsorship scandal"
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From Wikipedia:
Quote:
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The program ran from 1996 until 2004, when broad corruption was discovered in its operations and the program was discontinued. Illicit and even illegal activities within the administration of the program were revealed, involving misuse and misdirection of public funds intended for government advertising in Quebec. Such misdirections included sponsorship money awarded to ad firms in return for little or no work, which firms maintained Liberal organizers or fundraisers on their payrolls or donated back part of the money to the Liberal Party. The resulting investigations and scandal affected the Liberal Party of Canada and the then-government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. It was an ongoing affair for years, but rose to national prominence in early 2004 after the program was examined by Sheila Fraser, the federal auditor general. Her revelations led to the Martin government establishing the Gomery Commission to conduct a public inquiry and file a report on the matter. The official title of this inquiry was the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities. In the end the Commission concluded that $2 million was awarded in contracts without a proper bidding process, $250,000 was added to one contract price for no additional work, and $1.5 million was awarded for work that was never done, of which $1 million had to be repaid. The total cost of the Commission was $14 million.
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The sponsorship scandal was absolute peanuts compared to the total federal budget. In order to avoid another such scandal the Conservatives have added a dozen layers of bureaucracy to an already bloated public service. Instead of becoming more efficient, somehow, someway they managed to make us LESS efficient. They killed an ant with a sledgehammer. A very, very, very expensive sledgehammer. And in doing so, they have really difficult for talented employees to be productive employees.
To point, I'm responsible for some of the pay related systems at a federal department. I've been told that to avoid the possibility of someone stealing taxpayers money and there being another scandal, I will no longer be allowed access to production data because "I know too much about the inner workings of the system" and "could manipulate the system to my economic advantage" (commit fraud). So, basically, if the production system fails in some way, they want someone who has little knowledge of the inner workings of the system to look into it. Brilliant. They have really cut off their nose to spite their face. But at least there is no sponsorship scandal.