Unhappy with spending

Writing recently in the National Post, Jack Mintz said the number of Canadian federal government employees has increased from 257,000 in 2015 (when the Liberals took office) to 336,000 in 2022.

That's a staggering increase of 31%. The annual payroll cost has gone up from $38 billion in 2015 to $58 billion in 2022, an increase of 52%.

Have we received 52% better service lately? Quite the opposite, actually.

Over the final seven years of the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper, compensation went up a total of only 7%, and the number of employees actually fell.

With the Liberals in charge, according to Catherine Levesque, also writing in the National Post, fees paid to outside consultants run in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

(The current government) awarded contracts totalling $100 million to one single consulting firm, McKinsey. That came after the Harper government spent $2 million on McKinsey over its nine years on office.

What a coincidence that (current Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau appointed the ex-CEO of McKinsey as ambassador in China, seemingly his favourite country. And that doesn't include the entire government. Some departments decline to reveal the level of their spending on outside consultants to "protect Canada's economic interests".

Whose interests do they have in mind, exactly? Certainly not those of the taxpayers. And people blame high taxes and inflation on the war in Ukraine. That would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

How can anyone in the government possibly justify these numbers? It should be impossible, even for Trudeau and his speech writers.

The opposition parties are vowing a thorough investigation. We'll see how the Liberals wiggle their way out of this one.

Lloyd Vinish, Kelowna