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.

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #RyanThorpe CostOfPrintingTheBudget PrintedCopiesOfFederalBudget PrintingTheBudget

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Here’s how the feds blew your money this week

Business

Here’s how the feds blew your money this week

Published on November 9, 2024

Todayville

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

If politicians don’t want you to think they’re shady and only out for themselves, then they should stop doing shady, self-serving stuff like this.

The Trudeau government wants to push back the next federal election (currently scheduled for Oct. 20, 2025) by one week.

Politicians claim the election must be moved to Oct. 27, 2025, because the original date conflicts with the religious holiday of Diwali.

But it just so happens that 80 MPs won’t be eligible for their taxpayer-funded, lifetime pensions until Oct. 21, 2025.

One day after the currently scheduled election…

What a coincidence!

If the election is moved, those extra pensions for politicians (who don’t deserve them) would cost you tens of millions of dollars.

In fact, the CTF estimates the price tag could be as high as $120 million. Some politicians will serve for barely six years and walk out the door with a $2-million pension.

But those politicians don’t deserve a penny more from you.

They already take annual salaries ranging from $200,000 to $300,000. They already take a pay raise every single year. They already take a $100,000 severance and a $15,000 transition allowance.

They can take those bloated, six-figure salaries of theirs and use them to save for their own retirements.

At minimum, politicians shouldn’t be trying to rig the system to stick their greedy fingers deeper into your pockets.

This week, CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano went into the belly of the beast and testified at a Parliamentary committee. He stuck up for you and called B.S. on the plan to pinch extra pensions for politicians.

Franco laid out two simple solutions.

Option one: If the election must be moved, then make it earlier.
Option two: make the pension eligibility date later.

We’ve got some good news to report back.

The Conservatives are opposed to the government delaying the election to secure millions in pensions for dozens of politicians who don’t deserve them.

So is the Bloc Québécois and the NDP.

And here’s something we’ve never seen before.

At committee, a Liberal MP told Franco she would vote against her own government and oppose moving the election.

You can watch Franco’s opening remarks at the Parliamentary committee by clicking the link below.

Automotive

Major Automaker Exec Flatly Says Liberals’ EV ‘Mandates’ Are ‘Impossible’ To Meet

Published on November 9, 2024

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Ireland Owens

Toyota’s North American Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jack Hollis criticized U.S. policies promoting electric vehicle adoption (EV) on Friday, according to Bloomberg.

The Toyota COO said that electric vehicle policies are “de facto mandates” that are not in sync with consumer demand, according to Bloomberg. Hollis also said that EV mandates such as those in California are impossible to meet, according to CNBC.

“The whole EV ecosystem is ahead of the consumer,” Hollis told reporters Friday, “It’s not in alignment with consumers. It’s just not.”

The Biden-Harris administration has introduced various EV-related policies as part of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, including introducing a tailpipe emissions rule in March that would require about 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after 2032 to be EVs or hybrids. Biden has been leading a push to build half a million public EV chargers nationwide by 2030, that has so far been met with various slowdowns.

Various American automakers have backpedaled on EV goals despite the current administration funneling billions of dollars in subsidies as part of its EV agenda. The California Air Resources Board’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulations require that 35% of 2026 model-year vehicles be zero-emission.

“I have not seen a forecast by anyone … government or private, anywhere that has told us that that number is achievable. At this point, it looks impossible,” Hollis said of the zero-emission regulations. “Demand isn’t there. It’s going to limit a customer’s choice of the vehicles they want.”

Many automakers have experienced issues with EV sales, including used EV models experiencing drastic price cuts due to slackening consumer demand. Ford Motor Company announced in October that it lost an additional $1.2 billion on EVs in the third quarter and announced in September that it would offer free EV chargers and home installations to incentivize customers.

Toyota did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.