Government Finances: What a Mess!
TORONTO – Today Catholic Christians begin the start of their Holy Week and the end of the Lenten cycle – a forty-day period of reflection (remorse) before Easter Sunday and redemption. I am afraid that I feel a twinge of hypocrisy knowing that I cannot meet the standard my own Faith beliefs hold for adherents, even as I try to fulfil – via the newspaper – civic obligations predicated on accessibility, transparency and accountability. Anyway, not to worry, Both the Provincial Government and the Catholic School Boards are doing their best to remove that sense of civic and moral obligation from their agenda. The City governments and authorities (particularly Toronto), appear bereft of any leadership and purpose.
Here is a summary of some of the most egregious examples of non- dismissiveness of matters that should be of concern for anyone contemplating judgement on duties not met – all within the last week – as exposed by the Auditors General, and other government agencies.
1. Four hundred thousand (400,000) civil servants are named on Ontario’s Sunshine List, government employees who earn more that $100,000 per year. Apparently, none of them “work” in any transportation departments associated with making vehicular traffic more fluid. Those jobs have been taken over by the corps of medical practitioners and researchers preaching “more bike lanes” to deliver us from any and all ills.
2. One hundred and fifty-three thousand illegal foreign students out of a total of circa 650,000. As Former Immigration Minister Marc Miller said, some people have been “gaming the system”. At a minimum per capita cost of between $50,000 and $ 75,000, just the “illegals” represent some $75 Billion in “gaming”, bu the Federal government is being lobbied to forgive student loans,
3. That same Federal government, on Friday, boasted having met Trump’s ultimatum to spend 2% of GDP by end of fiscal 2025-26 by boosting defense spending to $60 billion this year and meeting the 5% quota by 2030.
4. When money is in abundant supply there is always some level of maladministration to help squander it. Toronto City Council recently approved a $265,000 grant per unit to builders of unsold housing stock in order to make housing more affordable. The feds will provide close to a Billion dollars per year for the next seven years to meet those goals – despite the soaring number of unsold available units and the plummeting costs of units coming unto the market.
5. And finally, for now, the Toronto Catholic District School Board announce the cancellation of the International Languages Day program so they could “save” some money. Seventy-seven instructors summarily lost their jobs. If the students had been Francophone, there would have been a Revolution of sorts. As it is, the Minister took the advise of the Director who in 2024 caused the Trustees and the minister to accept his budget revealing a $100 million surplus. The real numbers later reflected a $78 million deficit. He not only kept his job but was able to spread the wealth to others of the senior management, as if to illustrate that education is all about executive compensation not student achievement.
In the pics below, the demonstration against Doug Ford that took place on Saturday at Queen’s Park (photo: Matteo Volpe)
