Business
Feds spend $4.3 million printing out budget
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Ryan Thorpe
The average cost for each copy of the budget is $110.
Federal documents, including the budget, are routinely made available for free on government websites.
Here’s how the federal government could have saved money printing the budget:
It could have bought 1,000 top of the line, all-in-one printers at retail price.
Then it could have bought 10,000 multi-packs of colour ink.
Along with 106,000 reams of paper.
And then it could have assigned one of the 108,000 new bureaucrats hired under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to print out copies of the budget.
Or it could have bought more than 333,000 USB flash drives and handed out digital copies to anyone who wanted to read it.
And even after this epic office supply shopping spree, Ottawa would have saved a million dollars.
Instead, Ottawa blew $4.3 million on printing the federal budget since 2015.
In fact, the government continues to spend half-a-million dollars a year printing paper copies of the budget, more than a decade after authorizing the transition to digital-only publications, according to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“It’s 2024, presumably the government isn’t still using carrier pigeons, so it probably doesn’t need to spend half-a-million dollars printing paper copies of its budget every year,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Not only are taxpayers getting soaked by what’s in the budget, we’re also getting a six-figure tab just to print it out.”
On average, the federal government spends $482,000 annually printing out thousands of copies of its budget, despite the fact the government has been trumpeting its embrace of the digital economy for years.
The costliest year on record was 2023, when the Trudeau government spent $753,160 printing 4,200 copies of the federal budget, according to the records.
That was $443,370 more than the Conservatives spent in 2015, the last year in which the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper tabled a budget.
The least expensive year on record was 2021, when the government spent $215,434 printing copies of its budget.
Cost of printing the federal budget, 2015 to 2024, access-to-information records
|
Year |
Number of copies |
Cost |
|
2015 |
5,911 |
$309,790 |
|
2016 |
5,876 |
$490,334 |
|
2017 |
5,937 |
$553,804 |
|
2018 |
5,561 |
$655,645 |
|
2019 |
4,874 |
$457,793 |
|
2020 |
N/A |
N/A |
|
2021 |
1,599 |
$215,434 |
|
2022 |
3,035 |
$632,273 |
|
2023 |
4,200 |
$753,160 |
|
2024 |
2,225 |
$270,418 |
|
Total |
39,218 |
$4,338,651 |
Given the number of copies the government prints each year, the federal budget would constitute a best seller in the Canadian publishing industry, according to BookNet Canada.
The average cost for each copy of the budget is $110.
In 2012, the Harper government authorized federal departments to transition to online-only publications, estimating the move would save taxpayers $178 million annually.
Federal documents, including the budget, are routinely made available for free on government websites.
“The government proved in 2021 that it could bring printing costs down, so taxpayers expect that to happen every year moving forward,” Terrazzano said. “Printing some physical copies is understandable, but an average tab of half-a-million-dollars is silly.”
Since 2015, the federal government printed 39,218 physical copies of the budget.
According to online calculations, roughly 1,460 standard pine trees would have been cut down to produce that volume of paper.
The Trudeau government is more than 1.8 billion trees short of its promise to plant two billion trees by 2030.
From LifeSiteNews
The Center for Innovative Public Health Research’s website suggests teenage girls make their ‘own decisions’ about sex and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.
For almost a decade, the U.S. government funded a group that actively works to teach kids how to use sex toys and then keep them hidden from their parents to the tune of $22 million.
According to investigative reporter Hannah Grossman at the Manhattan Institute, The Center for Innovative Public Health Research (CIPHR) has been educating minors about sex toys with public funds.
Records show that the millions given to the group since 2016, according to its website, go toward “health education programs” that “promote positive human development.”
However, the actual contents of the programs, as can be seen from comments from CIPHR CEO Michele Ybarra, seem to suggest that its idea of “human” development is skewed toward radical sex education doctrine.
In 2017, CIPHR launched Girl2Girl, which is funded by federal money to promote “sex-ed program just for teen girls who are into girls.” Its website lets users, who are girls between ages 14 and 16, sign up for “daily text messages … about things like sex with girls and boys.”
The actual content of some of the messages is very concerning. Its website notes that some of the texts talk about “lube and sex toys” as well as “the different types of sex and ways to increase pleasure.”
The website actively calls upon teenage girls to make their “own decisions” and not let their parents know if they don’t want to.
Grossman shared a video clip on X of Ybarra explaining how they educate minors about the use of “sex toys” and dealing with their parents if they are found out.
The clip, from a 2022 Brown University webinar, shows Ybarra telling researchers how to prepare “young person(s)” for her research.
She said if they are doing “focus groups,” she will ask them, “Okay, so what happens if somebody comes into the room and sees words like penis and sex toys on your screen — on your computer screen or on your phone? What if it’s your mom?’”
In 2023, CIPHR launched Transcendent Health, which is a sex-education program for minors who are gender confused. This initiative received $1.3 million of federal grant money that expired last month.
Grossman observed that the federal government “should not fund programs that send sexually explicit messages to minors and encourage them to conceal these communications from parents.”
She noted that in order to protect children and “prevent further harm,” U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services “should immediately cancel CIPHR’s active contract and deny its future grant applications.”
“By doing so, the Trump administration can send a clear message: Taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for perverted ‘research’ projects,” she noted.
The Trump administration has thus far, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), exposed billions in government waste and fraud. Many such uses of taxpayer dollars are currently under review by the administration, including pro-abortion and pro-censorship activity through USAID, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda” through the National Science Foundation, and billions to left-wing “green energy” nonprofits through the Environmental Protection Agency.
Business
Canadian Police Raid Sophisticated Vancouver Fentanyl Labs, But Insist Millions of Pills Not Destined for U.S.
Sam Cooper
Mounties say labs outfitted with high-grade chemistry equipment and a trained chemist reveal transnational crime groups are advancing in technical sophistication and drug production capacity
Amid a growing trade war between Washington and Beijing, Canada—targeted alongside Mexico and China for special tariffs related to Chinese fentanyl supply chains—has dismantled a sophisticated network of fentanyl labs across British Columbia and arrested an academic lab chemist, the RCMP said Thursday.
At a press conference in Vancouver, senior investigators stood behind seized lab equipment and fentanyl supplies, telling reporters the operation had prevented millions of potentially lethal pills from reaching the streets.
“This interdiction has prevented several million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl from being produced and distributed across Canada,” said Cpl. Arash Seyed. But the presence of commercial-grade laboratory equipment at each of the sites—paired with the arrest of a suspect believed to have formal training in chemistry—signals an evolution in the capabilities of organized crime networks, with “progressively enhanced scientific and technical expertise among transnational organized crime groups involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs,” Seyed added.
This investigation is ongoing, while the seized drugs, precursor chemicals, and other evidence continue to be processed, police said.
Recent Canadian data confirms the country has become an exporter of fentanyl, and experts identify British Columbia as the epicenter of clandestine labs supplied by Chinese precursors and linked to Mexican cartel distributors upstream.
In a statement that appears politically responsive to the evolving Trump trade threats, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul said, “There continues to be no evidence, in this case and others, that these labs are producing fentanyl for exportation into the United States.”
In late March, during coordinated raids across the suburban municipalities of Pitt Meadows, Mission, Aldergrove, Langley, and Richmond, investigators took down three clandestine fentanyl production sites.
The labs were described by the RCMP as “equipped with specialized chemical processing equipment often found in academic and professional research facilities.” Photos released by authorities show stainless steel reaction vessels, industrial filters, and what appear to be commercial-scale tablet presses and drying trays—pointing to mass production capabilities.
The takedown comes as Canada finds itself in the crosshairs of intensifying geopolitical tension.
Fentanyl remains the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Canada, with toxic supply chains increasingly linked to hybrid transnational networks involving Chinese chemical brokers and domestic Canadian producers.
RCMP said the sprawling B.C. lab probe was launched in the summer of 2023, with teams initiating an investigation into the importation of unregulated chemicals and commercial laboratory equipment that could be used for synthesizing illicit drugs including fentanyl, MDMA, and GHB.
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