It should matter but won’t, because the system has been corrupted so as there is no accountability by anyone for anything. Minister Leblanc had some soothing words of comfort yesterday…my gosh it’s bad, so to speak but CBSA identified a problem and is fixing it. Really? How did they identify the problem when the A-G couldn’t connect the dots?
What a sad mess. Some well connected people made a lot of money for doing little and what was delivered was a junk product.
It’s funny how the culture in public organizations has changed over two or three decades. My 4-H club was designed to make the members responsible for sound financial management and expenditures and these people have carried that culture as adults to other organizations. Ottawa needs to hire some 4-Hers as consultants to get back on track.
Nothing less than bringing down the government in a non confidence vote should be an acceptable outcome in a civilized country, yet it belongs to the realm of wild, hopeless, dreams 😔
When your boss accepts $9000 a night graft and thinks it is ok, it is hard for underlings not to take advantage and think it is OK. Ethics is set at the top and trickles through the organization. This government is ethically challenged more than any in my memory.
In the private company I work for, lunch with a vendor (no alcohol allowed) is as much as you can get, provided that it doesn't take place during a bidding process. Getting small gifts like a pen is ok, but a bottle of wine is frowned upon and Blue Jays tickets are verboten. A 9000$ night in a luxury resort would get me fired with cause, for sure, yet the parliamentary ethics committee says that it takes a Ferrari for a gift to be considered as "influenceable". Another of the many things that must change in this country, and pronto
This smacks of fraud to me. Who will go to jail ? Probably no one — which is what usually happens when taxpayers’money is stolen. I hope the RCMP takes a hard look at what went on here. Follow the money — check out the lifestyles of the principals involved. Luxury homes, vacations etc. fancy cars and other accoutrements of living large. If Jagmeet doesn’t pull the plug after this revelation by the AG, he doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. Criminal charges needed with a public trial
Perhaps today's mobsters keep zero sets of books instead of two?
When do we declare Canada a failed state - before or after the next federal election, which will feature * E V E N * M O R E * foreign interference (any foreign state welcome to participate) and Elections Canada bringing in the 14-17 youth vote via the TikTok app?
Also where does one move to at this point?
The US has gone batshit crazy with two candidates that likely both should be in the dementia ward of federal prison.
Western Europe? Too close to Russia and the Middle East for me.
Argentina? I'm currently monitoring it. They eat a lot of beef and drink a lot of wine there and there's mountains, so perhaps?
@LineEditors Jen and Matt - this should be a Special Video Dispatch for you two....ideas of where Canadians can flee to when Canada finally terminates...pros and cons of each locale.
I wouldn’t doubt the mob keeps better books than the feds. The mob also has a very effective control system to mete out consequences for the sort of activities described in the auditors report. This type of reward system sadly does not exist in the Federal government. If anything, those responsible will get promoted or given early retirement with or without official language training l
To the cynical there appear to be all sorts of data that means nothing. Loss of full time employment hours, unsustainable debt, lack of reasonable housing opportunities, on and on the political circus carousel goes. The MSM covers some issues, avoids others until it can not, basically knows it is dying and moans about it. So some of us look to new media sources. Here is a tip, we are not interested in dying out with whatever varieties of malady the moaners are choosing to haplessly decry or shamefully ignore. There are actual investigative persons mining away in the dark pulling together threads of truth and endeavoring to be heard. So be a moaner or be a searcher. In either case do what you can to have a good personal day.
Our esteemed editors will have actual numbers, but newsrooms used to have large staffs and could assign investigative reporters to important issues and take months to do it. Now there's skeleton staffs trying to churn out enough "print" to fill up a much smaller publication.
I will say that this episode is a twofer to use an unhappy term recently employed by the PM in another context...
You have a completely botched procurement process of epic proportions and much evidence of financial mismanagement that likely should form the subject of a case study at the nearest university offering a MPA as well as troubling the peace and quiet of whatever constabulary should check out the fraud and criminal mismanagement of public funds involved with this episode.
And, you have a product that apparently never really worked adequately (I have no personal knowledge on this never having downloaded the app or needed it).
Usually, the Feds are all over process to the exclusion of product. Here we have a screwed up process AND a screwed up product. Wow!
The lack of accountability, both ministerially as well as within the civil service, is upsetting. There is no ministerial accountability for anything these days save for the capital crime of annoying the PM. Firing the civil servants involved and their supervisors is likely against their human rights and I am sure, chastised by this distressing episode, they will strive to 'do better next time'.
We had occasion to use it the five times we were able to escape (and return to) the country — on four of those it was annoyingly cumbersome but we fought our way through (noting how it compared most unfavourably to the US CBP MPC / Mobile Passport Control app). The fifth, it was a total cluster — trying to enter Pond Inlet (Baffin Island) by sea, turned out the port was not one of those listed, so CBSA had to fly in a couple of agents to process the whole ship by hand. Fully masked and vax’d, of course.
Yes, heads should roll, but I suspect juicy pensions will be the result.
Great article! The auditor's report is SO damning that even the Toronto Star didn't dare to try to spin it off to save the liberals face. Unbelievable that there are people that are so afraid of Poilievre that prefer being robbed (this is taxpayers, that is, our, money what we are talking about) in such blatant way. Sad to say, but I guess that this is what we deserve
Perhaps the committee looking into the arrivalCan app should recommend that the departments responsible for this mismanagement should have theirs budgets cut by 60 million,as the can't manage our money properly.
In my 25 years as a federal public servant, none of Deputy Ministers I worked for would have tolerated this kind of slipshod management. What has happened to this institution that was once the envy of governments around the world? Old school is sometimes better than no school at all!
Another important discussion this should spark, but probably won't, is the lasting impact of the pervasive zeitgeist during Covid that you were basically killing people if you questioned anything that was being done in its name. I'm sure this at least contributed to how this happened, overall - not to mention many other of our current and persisting societal woes. The assumption was that whatever initiative was deemed the right thing to do, by the right people, should be pursued irrespective of efficacy or consequences. It would be nice if we could discuss this now, in calmer times, so that we may make more balanced decisions and efforts during our next crisis (one can dream, right)?
Excellent comments, and you point out the perfect circumstances for a license to print money scenario. Under the cover of a crisis situation, move huge amounts of money through opaque layers of administration and ride out the consequences if and when someone actually pays attention. It might have tasted better for those who paid the freight if the product produced was decent. But then that’s part of the action: a bug laden mess that needed constant upgrades.
Exactly. While asking questions during an emergency might seem quite pesky, anything less allows rather questionable things to happen, which does nothing to relieve the situation.
This purposeful government action is to create " fogging of transparency " , keep the " plebs" in the dark. An action employed by all stripes , from municipal, to provincial, to federal. But I shall still always vote & continue to fight !
Oh, don't worry Mitch, the nation's intrepid media (or what remains of it) will find these reports fascinating news once more - as soon as the Liberals are no longer in power.
As soon as their preferred team is no longer the one being analysed, the nation's pundits will suddenly rediscover their long dormant zeal for checks and balances on those in power - and get back in the habit of expressing outrage at fiscal anomalies.
If a Poilievre government has misstated the nations finances by $1.50, you will read about it for months, maybe years.
It should matter but won’t, because the system has been corrupted so as there is no accountability by anyone for anything. Minister Leblanc had some soothing words of comfort yesterday…my gosh it’s bad, so to speak but CBSA identified a problem and is fixing it. Really? How did they identify the problem when the A-G couldn’t connect the dots?
What a sad mess. Some well connected people made a lot of money for doing little and what was delivered was a junk product.
It’s funny how the culture in public organizations has changed over two or three decades. My 4-H club was designed to make the members responsible for sound financial management and expenditures and these people have carried that culture as adults to other organizations. Ottawa needs to hire some 4-Hers as consultants to get back on track.
I just fear there will be no consequences paid for this fiasco.
Nothing less than bringing down the government in a non confidence vote should be an acceptable outcome in a civilized country, yet it belongs to the realm of wild, hopeless, dreams 😔
In another era, ministers would resign for failures like this.
But that was a very different time.
That was always the way in Parliamentary government until Jagmeet Singh came along.
When your boss accepts $9000 a night graft and thinks it is ok, it is hard for underlings not to take advantage and think it is OK. Ethics is set at the top and trickles through the organization. This government is ethically challenged more than any in my memory.
In the private company I work for, lunch with a vendor (no alcohol allowed) is as much as you can get, provided that it doesn't take place during a bidding process. Getting small gifts like a pen is ok, but a bottle of wine is frowned upon and Blue Jays tickets are verboten. A 9000$ night in a luxury resort would get me fired with cause, for sure, yet the parliamentary ethics committee says that it takes a Ferrari for a gift to be considered as "influenceable". Another of the many things that must change in this country, and pronto
This smacks of fraud to me. Who will go to jail ? Probably no one — which is what usually happens when taxpayers’money is stolen. I hope the RCMP takes a hard look at what went on here. Follow the money — check out the lifestyles of the principals involved. Luxury homes, vacations etc. fancy cars and other accoutrements of living large. If Jagmeet doesn’t pull the plug after this revelation by the AG, he doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. Criminal charges needed with a public trial
This piece is the money shot! Perfectly penned. Well done.
What a horrible federal government we have.
Absolutely incompetent and obviously corrupt.
Perhaps today's mobsters keep zero sets of books instead of two?
When do we declare Canada a failed state - before or after the next federal election, which will feature * E V E N * M O R E * foreign interference (any foreign state welcome to participate) and Elections Canada bringing in the 14-17 youth vote via the TikTok app?
Also where does one move to at this point?
The US has gone batshit crazy with two candidates that likely both should be in the dementia ward of federal prison.
Western Europe? Too close to Russia and the Middle East for me.
Argentina? I'm currently monitoring it. They eat a lot of beef and drink a lot of wine there and there's mountains, so perhaps?
@LineEditors Jen and Matt - this should be a Special Video Dispatch for you two....ideas of where Canadians can flee to when Canada finally terminates...pros and cons of each locale.
That ought to fill an hour or more!😆
Like & Subscribe to The Line 😎
CP, my responses to each of your paragraphs:
Yes;
Yes;
Yes;
Yes;
Yes;
Yes;
Yes;
Yes; the diet and scenery sound quite familiar and wonderful
Yessssssssssssssssss!!
Yes;
I repeat, Yessssssssssssssssss!!
This likley scratches the surface. Whacking say $100B and 100K employees from the Federal civil service should be easy.
I wouldn’t doubt the mob keeps better books than the feds. The mob also has a very effective control system to mete out consequences for the sort of activities described in the auditors report. This type of reward system sadly does not exist in the Federal government. If anything, those responsible will get promoted or given early retirement with or without official language training l
Personally, I favor the mob retirement plan but with bilingual bullets.
To the cynical there appear to be all sorts of data that means nothing. Loss of full time employment hours, unsustainable debt, lack of reasonable housing opportunities, on and on the political circus carousel goes. The MSM covers some issues, avoids others until it can not, basically knows it is dying and moans about it. So some of us look to new media sources. Here is a tip, we are not interested in dying out with whatever varieties of malady the moaners are choosing to haplessly decry or shamefully ignore. There are actual investigative persons mining away in the dark pulling together threads of truth and endeavoring to be heard. So be a moaner or be a searcher. In either case do what you can to have a good personal day.
Our esteemed editors will have actual numbers, but newsrooms used to have large staffs and could assign investigative reporters to important issues and take months to do it. Now there's skeleton staffs trying to churn out enough "print" to fill up a much smaller publication.
As Darryl Sittler once said, “ A fish rots from the head down.” He was speaking of Harold Ballard, today we have Junior.
I will say that this episode is a twofer to use an unhappy term recently employed by the PM in another context...
You have a completely botched procurement process of epic proportions and much evidence of financial mismanagement that likely should form the subject of a case study at the nearest university offering a MPA as well as troubling the peace and quiet of whatever constabulary should check out the fraud and criminal mismanagement of public funds involved with this episode.
And, you have a product that apparently never really worked adequately (I have no personal knowledge on this never having downloaded the app or needed it).
Usually, the Feds are all over process to the exclusion of product. Here we have a screwed up process AND a screwed up product. Wow!
The lack of accountability, both ministerially as well as within the civil service, is upsetting. There is no ministerial accountability for anything these days save for the capital crime of annoying the PM. Firing the civil servants involved and their supervisors is likely against their human rights and I am sure, chastised by this distressing episode, they will strive to 'do better next time'.
Yeesh...
We had occasion to use it the five times we were able to escape (and return to) the country — on four of those it was annoyingly cumbersome but we fought our way through (noting how it compared most unfavourably to the US CBP MPC / Mobile Passport Control app). The fifth, it was a total cluster — trying to enter Pond Inlet (Baffin Island) by sea, turned out the port was not one of those listed, so CBSA had to fly in a couple of agents to process the whole ship by hand. Fully masked and vax’d, of course.
Yes, heads should roll, but I suspect juicy pensions will be the result.
We will all be the better for it as we have our institutionally enforced “learning experience”.
Great article! The auditor's report is SO damning that even the Toronto Star didn't dare to try to spin it off to save the liberals face. Unbelievable that there are people that are so afraid of Poilievre that prefer being robbed (this is taxpayers, that is, our, money what we are talking about) in such blatant way. Sad to say, but I guess that this is what we deserve
Perhaps the committee looking into the arrivalCan app should recommend that the departments responsible for this mismanagement should have theirs budgets cut by 60 million,as the can't manage our money properly.
In my 25 years as a federal public servant, none of Deputy Ministers I worked for would have tolerated this kind of slipshod management. What has happened to this institution that was once the envy of governments around the world? Old school is sometimes better than no school at all!
Another important discussion this should spark, but probably won't, is the lasting impact of the pervasive zeitgeist during Covid that you were basically killing people if you questioned anything that was being done in its name. I'm sure this at least contributed to how this happened, overall - not to mention many other of our current and persisting societal woes. The assumption was that whatever initiative was deemed the right thing to do, by the right people, should be pursued irrespective of efficacy or consequences. It would be nice if we could discuss this now, in calmer times, so that we may make more balanced decisions and efforts during our next crisis (one can dream, right)?
Excellent comments, and you point out the perfect circumstances for a license to print money scenario. Under the cover of a crisis situation, move huge amounts of money through opaque layers of administration and ride out the consequences if and when someone actually pays attention. It might have tasted better for those who paid the freight if the product produced was decent. But then that’s part of the action: a bug laden mess that needed constant upgrades.
Exactly. While asking questions during an emergency might seem quite pesky, anything less allows rather questionable things to happen, which does nothing to relieve the situation.
This purposeful government action is to create " fogging of transparency " , keep the " plebs" in the dark. An action employed by all stripes , from municipal, to provincial, to federal. But I shall still always vote & continue to fight !
Oh, don't worry Mitch, the nation's intrepid media (or what remains of it) will find these reports fascinating news once more - as soon as the Liberals are no longer in power.
As soon as their preferred team is no longer the one being analysed, the nation's pundits will suddenly rediscover their long dormant zeal for checks and balances on those in power - and get back in the habit of expressing outrage at fiscal anomalies.
If a Poilievre government has misstated the nations finances by $1.50, you will read about it for months, maybe years.