Bureaucrat booze bill cost taxpayers $51,000 a month

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

“Working” in government may be a thirsty profession, but a booze tab of $51,000 a month is definitely a problem.

And the problem gets worse when the bill is sent to taxpayers.

Global Affairs Canada bureaucrats spent more than $3.3 million on alcohol between January 2019 and May 2024, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

That means the department spent an average of $51,000 on beer, wine and spirits per month.

“The government is wasting our tax dollars faster than we can say bottoms up,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Is any politician going to look a single struggling Canadian in the eye and try to justify the government spending thousands of dollars on wine tastings and cocktail parties?”

The largest single order from Global Affairs Canada came on Feb. 20, 2019, when bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., spent $56,684 on “wine purchases from special store.”

Other large orders include $9,815 worth of wine expensed by bureaucrats in Beijing, China, in March 2021, and $8,912 worth of wine expensed by bureaucrats in New Delhi, India, in May 2022.

Orders flown off to bureaucrats in far flung locales like Oslo, Tokyo, Moscow and London routinely run into the thousands of dollars per shipment.

At times, the records obtained by the CTF indicate the alcohol was purchased for a specific purpose – such as an official event or reception, or in one case, a $1,024 booze-filled “trivia night.”

But in many cases, the records provide no explanation beyond “bulk alcohol purchase” or “replenishment of wine stock.”

“The price of booze went up when Ottawa increased alcohol taxes, but that’s not a good excuse for these runaway bills,” Terrazzano said. “I like to party as much as the next guy, but maybe these bureaucrats could chill it on the cold ones when the government is more than $1 trillion in debt and taxpayers are struggling.”

On March 19, 2019, bureaucrats in San Jose, California, expensed $8,153 worth of booze. Just 12 days later, those bureaucrats spent another $2,196 on booze.

On Jan. 23, 2020, bureaucrats in Reykjavik, Iceland, bought $8,074 worth of booze, only to follow it up with a $2,849 alcohol purchase less than two months later.

Roughly $1.9 million of the spending came under the Canadian Alcoholic Beverages Abroad program, formerly known as the Canadian Wine Initiative.

The Canadian Wine Initiative was launched in 2004 with a mandate of supporting the country’s booze industry by promoting it abroad.

The rest of the spending was miscellaneous alcohol purchases billed to taxpayers. The records obtained by the CTF give no indication any of the $3.3 million spent on alcohol was recouped by taxpayers.

An access-to-information analyst at Global Affairs Canada told the CTF the department doesn’t centrally track its alcohol purchases. As a result, it’s possible Global Affairs Canada spent more than $3.3. million on booze.

The records obtained by the CTF only detail alcohol purchases from Global Affairs Canada. According to the government of Canada’s website, there are more than 200 other federal departments, Crown corporations and agencies.

“These bureaucrats seem like they’re having a good time, but what value are taxpayers getting from this huge booze bill?” Terrazzano said. “Billing taxpayers $51,000 a month for booze is mind boggling, but what’s even crazier is this tab is just for one government department.”

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #RyanThorpe BureaucratBoozeBill GlobalAffairsCanadaAlcohol

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Trudeau gov’t to halt funds for ‘unmarked graves’ search after millions spent, no bodies found

Published on February 21, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

According to the committee tasked with searching for ‘unmarked burials’ at residential schools, the Government of Canada has denied its request for further funding.

The Canadian federal government will be halting funding to a committee tasked with searching for “unmarked burials” near former residential schools after zero graves were discovered and millions of taxpayer dollars spent.

In a statement released last week, the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials said it was “extremely disappointed to learn that the Government of Canada has decided to discontinue funding to support their work to help Indigenous communities in their efforts to identify, locate and commemorate missing children.”

NAC urged “the federal government to reconsider” its funding cuts to the committee, which is co-administered by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the federal Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, that was struck in 2021.

The reality of the situation is that since the NAC was struck not one body has been located on lands associated with former government-funded and mandated residential schools, many of which were run by Catholic and Anglican churches in Canada.

In fact, Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations had already confirmed it spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a now-closed residential school, but that the search has turned up no human remains.

The initial funds budgeted in 2022 to aid in “locating burial sites linked to former Residential Schools” were already set to expire in 2025, with some $216.5 million having been spent. 

A total of $7.9 million granted for fieldwork has resulted in no human remains having been found to date. 

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools. 

As a result of the claims, since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation was more or less the reason there was a large international outcry in 2021 when it claimed it had found 215 “unmarked graves” of kids at the Kamloops Residential School. The claims of remains, however, were not backed by physical evidence but were rather disturbances in the soil picked up by ground-penetrating radar.  

The First Nation now has changed its claim of 215 graves to 200 “potential burials.”  

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau as recently as June again falsely stated that “unmarked graves” were discovered at former residential schools. 

Canadian indigenous residential schools, while run by both the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were mandated and set up by the federal government and ran from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.    

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In October of 2024, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.

Addictions

BC overhauls safer supply program in response to widespread pharmacy scam

Published on February 21, 2025

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By Alexandra Keeler

A B.C. pharmacy scam investigation has led the provincial government to return to a witnessed consumption model for safer supply

More than 60 pharmacies across B.C. are alleged to have participated in a kickback scheme linked to safer supply drugs, according to a provincial report released Feb. 19.

On Feb. 5, the BC Conservatives leaked a report that showed the findings of an internal investigation by the B.C. Ministry of Health. That investigation showed dozens of pharmacies were filling prescriptions patients did not require in order to overbill the government. These safer supply drugs were then diverted onto the black market.

After the report was leaked, the province committed to ending take-home safer supply models, which allow users to take hydromorphone pills home in bottles. Instead, it will require drug users to consume prescribed opioids in a witnessed program, under the oversight of a medical professional.

Gregory Sword, whose 14-year-old daughter Kamilah died in August 2022 after taking a hydromorphone pill that had been diverted from B.C.’s safer supply program, expressed outrage over the report’s findings.

“This is so frustrating to hear that [pharmacies] were making money off this program and causing more drugs [to flood] the street,” Sword told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.

The investigation found that pharmacies exploited B.C.’s Frequency of Dispensing policy to maximize billings. To take advantage of dispensing fees, pharmacies incentivized clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market. Pharmacies earned up to $11,000 per patient a year.

“I’m positive that [the B.C. government has] known this for a long time and only made this decision when the public became aware and the scrutiny was high,” said Elenore Sturko, Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who released the leaked report in a statement on Feb. 5.

“As much as I am really disappointed in how long it’s taken for this decision to be made, I am also happy that this has happened,” she said.

The health ministry said it is investigating the implicated pharmacies. Those that are confirmed to have been involved could have their licenses suspended, be referred to law enforcement or become ineligible to participate in PharmaCare, the provincial program that helps residents cover the costs of prescription drugs.

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Witnessed dosing

The leaked report says that “a significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients.” It also says “prescribed alternatives are trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.”

Critics of the safer supply program say it enables addiction, while supporters say it reduces overdoses.

Sword, Kamilah’s father, is suing the provincial and federal governments, arguing B.C.’s safer supply program made it possible for youth such as his daughter to access drugs.

Madison, Kamilah’s best friend, also became addicted to opioids dispensed through safer supply programs. Madison was just 15 when she first encountered “dillies” — hydromorphone pills dispensed through safer supply, but widely available on the streets. She developed a tolerance that led her to fentanyl.

“I do know for sure that some pharmacies and doctors were aware of the diversion,” Madison’s mother Beth told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.

“When I first realized what my daughter was taking and how she was getting it, I phoned the pharmacy and the doctor on the label of the pill bottle to inform them that the patient was selling their hydromorphone,” Beth said.

Masha Krupp, an Ottawa mother who has a son enrolled in a safer supply program, has said the safer supply program in her city is similarly flawed. Canadian Affairs previously reported on this program, which is run by Recovery Care’s Ottawa-based harm reduction clinics.

“I read about the B.C. pharmacy scheme and wasn’t surprised,” Krupp told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20. Krupp lost a daughter to methadone toxicity while she was in an addiction treatment program at Recovery Care.

“Three years [after starting safer supply], my son is still using fentanyl, crack cocaine and methadone, despite being with Dr. [Charles] Breau and with Recovery Care for over three years,” Krupp testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health on Oct. 22, 2024.

Krupp has been vocal about the dangers of dispensing large quantities of opioids without proper oversight, arguing many patients sell their prescriptions to buy stronger street drugs.

“You can’t give addicts 28 pills and say, ‘Oh here you go,’” she said in her testimony. “They sell for three dollars a pop on the street.”

Krupp has also advocated for witnessed consumption of safer supply medications, arguing supervised dosing would prevent diversion and ensure proper oversight of pharmacies.

“I had talked about witnessed dosing for safe supply when I appeared before the parliamentary health committee last October,” she told Canadian Affairs this week.

“I’m grateful that finally … this decision has been made to return to a witness program,” said Sturko, the B.C. MLA.

In 2020, B.C. implemented a witnessed consumption model to ensure safer supply opioids were consumed as prescribed and to reduce diversion. In 2021, the province switched to take-home models. Its stated aim was to expand access, save lives and ease pressure on health-care facilities during the pandemic.

“You’re really fighting against a group of people … working within the bureaucracy of [the B.C. NDP] government … who have been making efforts to work towards the legalization of drugs and, in doing that, have looked only for opportunities to bolster their arguments for their position, instead of examining their approach in a balanced way,” said Sturko.

“These are foreseeable outcomes when you do not put proper safeguards in place and when you completely ignore all indications of negative impacts.”

Sword also believes some drug policies fail to prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.

“Greed is the ultimate evil in society and this just proves it,” he said. “We don’t care about these drugs getting into the wrong hands as long as I get my money.”

This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.

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