Reincarnation Is Not A Myth...

A Challenge...

What A Way To Start The New Year!

Hollywood Doing A Remake Of Grapes Of Wrath...

PET's Cradle To Grave Mandate Opened The Doors...

The sad case of how government spends but doesn’t think: Snobelen

By JOHN SNOBELEN, Toronto Sun

Last Updated: June 6, 2010 1:45am

There are two situations that should drive fear into the heart of every taxpayer.
The first is anytime a government measures its commitment to something by the amount of money they throw at it. That, it would seem, is most of the time.
Take your pick — environment, education, health care — most governments boast about how much they have increased spending as a primary measure of how much they care.
This is, of course, the rough equivalent of bragging about spending more money for your plane ticket than your seatmate did. Just because you spent more doesn’t mean you’re going any further.
Measuring commitment by spending is easy. It’s also pure nonsense.
Sometimes you really can deliver more with less. And when you are spending other people’s money, getting more for less is a good thing.
A former colleague in education once noted there was more money spent in the name of education than was actually spent improving learning. Truer words were never spoken.
Over the past eight years Ontario has experienced a decline in student enrolment, an oversupply of teachers and a significant recession. And yet, over the same time period, teacher wages have gone up over 30%.
Which begs the obvious question; are we getting more value for the increase in cost?
It is a question that goes unasked and unanswered. In a system that uses expenditures as a primary measure of quality, more is simply better.
Blank cheque
Government bragging about spending is nauseating but for the sheer ability to send taxpayers reeling nothing can compare to those special occasions when governments decide to write a blank cheque. Your cheque.
The issuing of a blank cheque is usually precipitated by some event that has caused government to suspend thinking and start spending. Most disasters and emergencies are met with a government (read taxpayer) blank cheque, even if spending won’t logically help the situation.
Think SARS. Think H1N1.
During the SARS scare government wrote a blank cheque. Spending in the name of SARS totalled nearly $1 billion. That, my friends, is a big blank cheque.
Much of the money was spent on “special supplies for health-care workers.” Which should beg the question: How many surgical masks and gloves can you buy for a billion?
H1N1 managed to beat out SARS in gross, and I mean gross, spending by almost double. We the taxpayers managed to spend money on advertising that aired after the threat of H1N1 had clearly passed. Apparently someone thought we needed to spend money to continue to scare ourselves.
When governments suspend thinking in favour of spending, ministries and government agencies are, not surprisingly, happy to go along. Some of the best creative thinking in the public sector is spent on attaching all manner of spending to the coattails of the crisis du jour. Name the tragedy and you will find a litany of ministry initiatives with vague ties that need immediate funding.
All of this comes to mind with the recent announcement that the total cost of security for the G8/G20 summits will reach $1 billion. We have, it seems, officially quit thinking.
Over the top
I am a big fan of cops. I have benefited personally from the skill, professional acumen and courage of our security forces, particularly the OPP. More than most, I know that all that separates democracy and anarchy is a thin blue line. And that thin blue line needs to be trained and equipped to meet today’s security needs.
That said — boys, a billion is just over the top.
john.snobelen@sunmedia.ca

Underlying Reason For Economic Chaos...

...one of the basic tenets put forward by Ben Franklin has been forgotten; A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned!
 
Penny deserves doom TS: It’s time to let the penny drop. Nostalgia is the only reason for keeping Canada’s lowly copper coin and, as shown by testimony before the Senate finance committee last week, that’s far from reason enough. MORE...

HMM! Another Ontario Success Story...

E-waste diverted, but where exactly?

Ontario’s high-profile electronic waste disposal program is failing to recycle millions of computers and televisions it promised to keep out of landfills. 10 May 05:00 MORE

If You Are Green And Observe Earth Hour How Much Do You Claim In Carbon Credits...

Earth Hour: Lights off, nobody home

By LORRIE GOLSTEIN, QMI Agency

...from the Toronto Star:

Earth Hour

Energy-saving tips and stories about Earth Hour, a global project to turn out the lights for an hour..

...is the subway being shut down, are diesel buses being taken off the road, does cooking cease in fast food and fashionable restaurants, does the Entertainment District shutdown their electronic POS units, ice makers, etc., etc. etc.

Leaving The Sinking Ship...

Premier's climate guru abandons $321,000 post

51 minutes ago

A highly paid bureaucrat hand-picked by Premier Dalton McGuinty to be his climate-change adviser has quietly left the government following criticism..

Are CPP/OAS Not Universal Plans...

...I would love to see an increase in both these plans and am willing to stop funding arts and crafts, reducing the beauracracy in Ottawa, stop funding for bi-lingual and diversity programs, etc. etc. to accomplish the increase.

Terence Corcoran: Stop the music! CARP speaks

Posted: January 11, 2010, 8:21 PM by NP Editor

The CARP-Znaimer pension vision is verifiably suspect, even bogus By Terence Corcoran

A

t around 3:45 p.m. yesterday afternoon on Toronto’s Classical 96.3 FM, just before playing Una Furtiva Lagrima, a Donizetti aria from Peruvian glamour tenor Juan Diego Florez’s Grammy nominated album, Bel Canto Spectacular, it was time for a news break. Stop the music! Here’s the latest major development: The New Democratic Party of Ontario wants the province to create a new provincial pension plan that would cover the “six out of 10 Ontario residents without a workplace pension, but it wouldn’t be mandatory.”
Since Classical 96.3 FM is owned by MZMedia, which is owned by Moses Znaimer, who controls a flock of interests as part of his micro-media empire under the brand name Zoomers, aimed at Baby Boomers with zip, and since Zoomer also includes ownership of the profit-making Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP), of which Mr. Znaimer is executive director, and since CARP just launched yesterday its own agit-prop campaign to embarrass Ottawa into setting up a new national “supplementary” pension scheme, it is obviously no coincidence that Classical 96.3 FM should find a new NDP-promoted state-run pension scheme to be of news value.

Click here to read more...

Start By Eliminating Clawbacks.....

....then give us break on the onerus taxes and fees imposed at the municipal level, ie: Toronto's vehicle tax grab, etc. But in fairness seniors do get a few breaks; transit fares, movie tickets, etc. but they're just window dressing.
Spectre of poverty stalks seniors TheStar.com - Opinion - Spectre of poverty stalks seniors

September 23, 2009

Carol Goar

No matter how grim the poverty statistics got, there was always one bright spot in the picture. Very few Canadians over the age of 65 were in financial hardship.

Politicians boasted about this social policy achievement at home and abroad. Low-income advocates held it up as proof that governments could lift people out of poverty if they made it a national priority.

Canada's performance was remarkable. Between 1971 and 1995, it cut the rate of poverty among seniors from 36.9 per cent to 2.9 per cent.

What no one – or almost no one – noticed was this success story was starting to unravel.

The Conference Board of Canada delivered the bad news in its latest annual report card on Canada.

"Poverty rates among seniors doubled between 1995 and 2005, which is disconcerting because we take such pride in having conquered seniors' poverty," said Anne Golden, president of the Ottawa-based think-tank. "And when the data for the current time period become available, we can expect this trend to persist."

This revelation came as no surprise to home care workers, church volunteers and organizers of charities such as Meals on Wheels. They knew what was going on.

The New Democratic Party was aware of the slippage, too. Its 36 MPs had noticed a worrisome increase in calls from older constituents facing eviction or cutting back on food and medicine to keep their homes.

The party's pension critic, Wayne Marston (Hamilton East-Stoney Creek), embarked on a cross-country listening tour last spring. He wrapped it up in Edmonton last weekend.

"Seniors feel invisible to their government," he said. "Far too many are just one crisis away from a financial catastrophe."

In June, the NDP introduced a motion in Parliament calling on the government to "expand and increase the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement to ensure all Canadians can count on a dignified retirement."

It passed unanimously. But nothing changed.

Since then, the NDP has made retirement security one of its top priorities. Leader Jack Layton says his party will not keep supporting Stephen Harper's minority government unless there is action on this issue.

Many Canadians don't see what the problem is. The poverty rate for seniors (5.9 per cent) is still much lower than the child poverty rate (15.1 per cent) or the rate for working-age adults (12.2 per cent).

But it is climbing more rapidly than for any other age group at a time when the population is greying.

One of the reasons is that Ottawa now "claws back" old-age security (OAS) benefits from taxpayers with retirement savings. This leaves them vulnerable to market swings.

A second reason is that the cost of electricity and home heating fuel has risen faster than the consumer price index. This means OAS payments and other seniors' benefits don't really keep pace with the cost of living.

A third reason is that the paperwork required to obtain old age security, pension and survivor's benefits has become intimidatingly complex. A significant number of older Canadians either don't apply or don't fill out their forms properly. They are also missing out on tax breaks targeted at seniors.

A final reason is the issue doesn't get much attention. Public opinion hasn't caught up to the facts. Anti-poverty groups focus chiefly on children. Seniors' groups tend to accentuate the needs of middle-to-upper income retirees. Governments don't talk about incipient problems.

The trajectory can still be reversed. The Conference Board has sounded the alarm. The NDP has taken up the cause. People are thinking about pensions.

The time to act is now, before Canada's fine record turns into a national embarrassment.

Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday