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Todayville At The Home Show With Canadian Closet
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Ryan Thorpe
“Can someone in government explain why taxpayers are being sent a bill so bureaucrats can decorate their offices with artwork that taxpayers have already bought and paid for?”
When bureaucrats hang art in their offices, taxpayers are on the hook – twice.
First, the government uses tax dollars to purchase artwork for its Art Bank. Then bureaucrats rent out that artwork and send the bill to taxpayers.
And that art bill comes to millions of dollars.
“Can someone in government explain why taxpayers are being sent a bill so bureaucrats can decorate their offices with artwork that taxpayers have already bought and paid for?” asked Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “This is an outrageous waste of money and, to add insult to injury, the government is double billing taxpayers for artwork we’ll never see.”
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation obtained access-to-information records detailing all art rentals made by federal departments and agencies from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Art Bank between January 2016 and July 2024.
During that time, federal departments and agencies racked up $7,808,827 in art rentals.
That means since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power, federal bureaucrats have been spending an average of $76,000 a month renting artwork for their offices.
“Every month, federal bureaucrats spend more money renting art than what the average Canadian earns in an entire year,” Terrazzano said. “It’s amazing that we need to say this, but maybe these bureaucrats could ease up at the taxpayer-funded Art Bank when record numbers of Canadians are lined up at food banks.”
Last year, the average Canadian worker made less than $70,000, according to data from Statistics Canada. In March 2024, Canada saw a record high two million visits to food banks, according to Food Banks Canada.
Federal departments and agencies made 1,445 rentals from the Art Bank between January 2016 and July 2024, according to the records.
The highest single rental came in April 2020, when a federal department or agency expensed $120,240 in artwork to taxpayers.
The records obtained by the CTF do not specify which federal departments or agencies expensed the art rentals.
The Art Bank contains more than 17,000 works of art from more than 3,000 artists, according to the CCA website.
“The Art Bank has the largest collection of contemporary Canadian art anywhere,” according to the CCA. “It houses paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and prints by emerging and established artists.”
The CCA is a federal Crown corporation, which dishes out hundreds of millions in grants to artists and arts organizations every year. In 2023-24, CCA grants totalled more than $300 million.
In 2022-23, the CCA received $423 million in federal funding, which accounts for about 90 per cent of the agency’s revenue.
So taxpayers not only foot the bill for this artwork through parliamentary appropriations to the CCA, but also get hit with a secondary expense when that artwork is later rented by a federal department or agency.
In Budget 2023, the government promised to find savings in the Crown corporations.
“The government will also work with federal Crown corporations to ensure they achieve comparable spending reductions, which would account for an estimated $1.3 billion over four years,” according to Budget 2023.
“Bureaucrats billing taxpayers $76,000 a month in art rentals is outrageous at the best of times, but with the government more than $1 trillion in debt and so many Canadians struggling, it’s utterly inexcusable,” Terrazzano said. “The government said it would find savings at Crown corporations, so defunding the Canada Council for the Arts is a perfect place to start.”
Federal departments and agencies expensing art rentals isn’t the only way taxpayers are hit with big bills so government officials can decorate their offices.
In July 2023, the CTF reported 52 Canadian Senators expensed $514,616 in art rentals to taxpayers since 2016.
From LifeSiteNews
The workforce reduction at a London, Ontario, facility that received $8.5 million in government funding appears to be a sign that Canadians do not have an appetite for bugs.
It appears Canadians’ taste for eating food made from bugs is not in high demand after news broke that a farm given millions by the federal government to raise crickets for “human and pet consumption” laid off two-thirds of its staff.
The cricket farm in London, Ontario, run by the Aspire Food Group just broke ground on a new 150,000-square-foot facility last year. The company said it was cutting shifts and going from 150 workers to 50.
In comments made to the trade news outlet AgFunderNews, company CEO David Rosenberg said the layoffs are due to making “improvements to its manufacturing system.”
The fact the company is already cutting costs in dramatic fashion comes only a short time after Canada’s federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contributed $8.5 million to it in 2022.
The cricket farm when fully operational can make 13 million kilograms of crickets for “human and pet consumption.”
It was given widespread coverage several years ago by Canada’s state-funded CBC, which billed it as the “world’s largest cricket production facility.”
Aspire’s pitch that its food had a lower environmental footprint than protein from cattle or pigs was in lockstep with the radical environmental goals of the Trudeau government as one of the reasons it landed a large grant.
According to AgFunderNews, only a year ago Aspire claimed its factory would be working at 100 percent by the start of 2024.
“We have significant contractual commitments for the majority of our production and expect 100% will be sold within the year,” former CEO Mohammed Ashour told AgFunderNews in March 2023.
Groups such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) blasted the federal government for subsidizing companies that make food out of crickets for human consumption, saying it amounts to giving Canadians “their ‘let them eat crickets’ moment.”
Both crickets and mealworms in recent years have been promoted by global elites as a source of protein that they say could replace beef or pork, and which can also be used in a variety of foods.
Indeed, the Great Reset of Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum (WEF) has as part of its agenda the promotion of eating bugs to replace beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
Conservative Party says layoffs at bug factory show ‘Canadians will not eat bugs’
The Conservative Party of Canada in an email to members said that the news regarding Aspire cutting most of its staff is proof that Canadians “will not eat bugs.”
“Justin Trudeau bet $9 million of your money on edible BUGS! He wants Canadians to own nothing, be happy, and eat crickets,” the party said in the email.
“But his bet failed. The company he invested YOUR tax dollars in has dramatically cut production and fired two-thirds of their staff. Turns out, Canadians don’t want to eat bugs.”
In 2022, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis blasted the current cancel-culture crusade against red meat by pushing bugs as a source of food and the Trudeau government for funding bug factories.
The Trudeau government has implemented many policies that align with the WEF’s so-called “climate change” agenda, including a punishing carbon tax, and attacks on the nation’s oil and gas industries.
According to records, since 2018, a total of $420,023 has been spent on helping multiple food companies that make human bug food.
At the same time, the Trudeau government has begun to attack Canadian farmers by pushing forth an agenda that would force them to reduce the amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This could have a large negative impact on the growing of feed for cattle as well as food for human consumption.
Aspire is not the only factory in Canada breeding bugs to turn them into food for both human and animal consumption. The CTF listed all of the cricket processing companies that receive corporate welfare.
Dr. Joseph Mercola, in a blog posted by LifeSiteNews, documented how Schwab’s Great Reset agenda looks to force the world’s population to, by pressuring local governments, make people “consider eating bugs and weeds and drink ‘reclaimed’ sewage.”
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