Fed executive pay rises $571 million since 2015

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Executive compensation in the federal government spiked by more than half-a-billion dollars since 2015, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

From 2015 to 2022, executive compensation across federal departments and agencies rose from $1.38 billion to $1.95 billion – an increase of 41 per cent. Meanwhile, the number of federal executives grew from 7,138 to 9,371 – an increase of 31 per cent.

Inflation increased by 19.4 per cent between 2015 and 2022, according to Statistics Canada data.

The average annual compensation among federal executives also rose from $193,600 to $208,480 during that period.

“Taxpayers need help with the rising cost of living, not higher taxes to pay for more highly paid paper-pushers,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It’s a safe bet that most Canadians struggling with grocery bills, heating bills and mortgage payments aren’t losing sleep worrying that government executives aren’t paid enough, so why is the government ballooning its c-suite?”

Table: Federal executive compensation, 2015 to 2022

Year (as of March)	Number of executives	Executive compensation
2015	7,138	$1,381,987,936
2016	7,181	$1,406,613,900
2017	7,209	$1,410,973,156
2018	7,438	$1,460,468,760
2019	7,863	$1,555,972,489
2020	8,202	$1,692,682,269
2021	8,837	$1,836,893,134
2022	9,371	$1,953,667,640

The spike in federal c-suite pay follows years of underwhelming performance results across departments and agencies.

In 2022-23, federal departments hit just 50 per cent of their performance targets, according to data from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Each year from 2018 through 2021, federal departments met less than half of their performance targets.

“Less than 50 per cent of performance targets are consistently met within the same year,” according to a 2023 report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government’s independent budget watchdog.

About 90 per cent of federal executives get a bonus each year, according to records obtained by the CTF. The feds handed out $202 million in bonuses in 2022, with the average bonus among executives being $18,252.

The feds handed out $1.3 billion in bonuses since 2015. The annual cost to taxpayers for federal bonuses has risen by 46 per cent during that time.

The number of employees receiving a six-figure annual salary has more than doubled under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A total of 102,761 federal bureaucrats received a six-figure salary in 2022, according to access-to-information records obtained by the CTF. When Trudeau came to power in 2015, 43,424 federal bureaucrats were collecting a six-figure salary.

The feds also handed out more than 800,000 raises between 2020 and 2022. With the feds employing about 400,000 bureaucrats, that means multiple employees received more than one raise in recent years.

Under the Trudeau government, the size of the federal bureaucracy has spiked by about 40 per cent, with more than 98,000 new hires.

“In the last couple years, taxpayers have paid for tens of thousands of new bureaucrats, hundreds of thousands of pay raises and hundreds of millions in bonuses, and we’re still getting poor performance from the bureaucracy,” Terrazzano said. “Trudeau needs to take air out of the ballooning bureaucracy, and he should start by reining in the c-suite.”

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #ExecutiveCompensation #FederalGovernmentCompensation #Inflation #RyanThorpe

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‘Context Of Chemsex’: Biden-Harris Admin Dumps Millions Into Developing Drug-Fueled Gay Sex App

Published on November 22, 2024

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Owen Klinsky

The Biden-Harris administration is spending millions funding a project to advise homosexual men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse.

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) in July announced a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for Assistant Professor Roman Shrestha to develop his app JomCare — “a smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive intervention aimed at improving access to HIV- and substance use-related harm reduction services for Malaysian GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex,” university news website UCONN Today reported. “Chemsex,” according to Northern Irish LGBTQ+ nonprofit the Rainbow Project, is the involvement of drug use in one’s sex life, and typically involves Methamphetamine (crystal meth), Mephedrone (meth), and GHB and GBL (G).

Examples of the app’s use-cases include providing a user who has reported injecting drugs with prompts about ordering an at-home HIV test kit and employing safe drug injection practices, UCONN Today reported. The app is also slated to provide same-day delivery of HIV prevention drug PrEP, HIV self-testing kits and even a mood tracker.

“In Malaysia, our research has indicated that harm reduction needs of GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex are not being adequately met,” Shrestha told UCONN Today. “Utilizing smartphone apps and other mHealth tools presents a promising and cost-effective approach to expand access to these services.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and is punishable by imprisonment, according to digital LGBTQ+ rights publication Equaldex. Drug use, including of cannabis, is illegal in Malaysia, and drug trafficking can be a capital offense.

The Old Border Czar VS The New Border Czar pic.twitter.com/9Ie8JRsroR

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 12, 2024

The NIH disbursed $773,845 to Shrestha in July to conduct a 90-day trial testing the efficacy of JomCare among 482 chemsex-involved Malaysian gays. It also provided Shrestha with $191,417 in 2022 to “facilitate access to gender-affirming health care” for transgender women in the country.

“Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism used to describe a wide range of procedures, including sometimes irreversible hormone treatments that can lead to infertility as well as irreversible surgeries like mastectomies, phalloplasties and vaginoplasties.

Shrestha has a track record of researching mobile health (mHealth) initiatives for foreign homosexuals, co-authoring a 2024 study entitled, “Preferences for mHealth Intervention to Address Mental Health Challenges Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in Nepal.”

The proliferation of LGBT rights has been a “foreign policy priority” under the Biden-Harris administration, a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation, with President Joe Biden instructing federal government department heads to “to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”

“Around the globe, including here at home, brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) activists are fighting for equal protection under the law, freedom from violence, and recognition of their fundamental human rights,” a 2021 White House memorandum states. “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would collaborate to establish a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Musk claiming the agency would feature a leaderboard for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.” Some DOGE cuts could come from LGBTQ+ programs, such as a grant from the United States Agency for International Development to perform sex changes in Guatemala and State Department funding for the showing of a play in North Macedonia entitled, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”

Shrestha and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, a UCONN spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “specific questions about the grant and the decision to award it to our faculty member should be directed to the NIH, since that’s the funding agency.”

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Broken ‘equalization’ program bad for all provinces

Published on November 21, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Alex Whalen and Tegan Hill

Back in the summer at a meeting in Halifax, several provincial premiers discussed a lawsuit meant to force the federal government to make changes to Canada’s equalization program. The suit—filed by Newfoundland and Labrador and backed by British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta—effectively argues that the current formula isn’t fair. But while the question of “fairness” can be subjective, its clear the equalization program is broken.

In theory, the program equalizes the ability of provinces to deliver reasonably comparable services at a reasonably comparable level of taxation. Any province’s ability to pay is based on its “fiscal capacity”—that is, its ability to raise revenue.

This year, equalization payments will total a projected $25.3 billion with all provinces except B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan to receive some money. Whether due to higher incomes, higher employment or other factors, these three provinces have a greater ability to collect government revenue so they will not receive equalization.

However, contrary to the intent of the program, as recently as 2021, equalization program costs increased despite a decline in the fiscal capacity of oil-producing provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. In other words, the fiscal capacity gap among provinces was shrinking, yet recipient provinces still received a larger equalization payment.

Why? Because a “fixed-growth rule,” introduced by the Harper government in 2009, ensures that payments grow roughly in line with the economy—even if the gap between richer and poorer provinces shrinks. The result? Total equalization payments (before adjusting for inflation) increased by 19 per cent between 2015/16 and 2020/21 despite the gap in fiscal capacities between provinces shrinking during this time.

Moreover, the structure of the equalization program is also causing problems, even for recipient provinces, because it generates strong disincentives to natural resource development and the resulting economic growth because the program “claws back” equalization dollars when provinces raise revenue from natural resource development. Despite some changes to reduce this problem, one study estimated that a recipient province wishing to increase its natural resource revenues by a modest 10 per cent could face up to a 97 per cent claw back in equalization payments.

Put simply, provinces that generally do not receive equalization such as Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan have been punished for developing their resources, whereas recipient provinces such as Quebec and in the Maritimes have been rewarded for not developing theirs.

Finally, the current program design also encourages recipient provinces to maintain high personal and business income tax rates. While higher tax rates can reduce the incentive to work, invest and be productive, they also raise the national standard average tax rate, which is used in the equalization allocation formula. Therefore, provinces are incentivized to maintain high and economically damaging tax rates to maximize equalization payments.

Unless premiers push for reforms that will improve economic incentives and contain program costs, all provinces—recipient and non-recipient—will suffer the consequences.