Make-work at its finest
Do you ever get the feeling that Canada’s Public Service couldn’t design a toothbrush without first setting up a committee of outside experts to submit a detailed study of the situation and then outsourcing the actual design to a third party?
Living in a country that routinely takes a decade or two to procure anything, whether it be new fighter jets, ice breakers, supply ships, or the occasional pipe line, you’d be forgiven for having your doubts.
The foul-up over creating a new automated pay system for all government workers is a perfect example. From the time the Phoenix system rolled, or maybe stumbled out, it was a disaster. Estimates suggest that at one time or another 80% of government workers had their pay screwed up either getting too little, too much or none at all.
The system was provided by IBM, there’s that outsourcing again, and supposedly run by Public Services and Procurement Canada. The cause of the problem can’t even be laid at the feet of any single government either. The system took so long to be put into place that the Harper Tories and the Trudeau Liberals both managed to get their hands into the mix.
The latest fiasco, Arrivecan, was even worse. Designed to make it easier to cross the U.s./canada border during the pandemic and post-pandemic period it was originally budgeted at $80,000. The cost has since ballooned to around $54,000,000, at least that’s what we think, since nobody seems to know exactly how much was spent and most of the subcontractors apparently didn’t keep, or have since misplaced, any records of what they did or where the money went.
It’s not just the big things that the government and its loyal minions seem to throw our money at. Having been a Public Service employee at one time in my chequered career (Personnel officer with Parks Canada) I got a first-hand look at a variety of projects. Don’t get me wrong, the average Public Service worker is as conscientious and hard working as anyone. The problem seems to be with management: Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Assistant Deputy Ministers, Regional Directors and the like who are in a constant ‘make-work’ mode to justify their budgets.
All of this hit home earlier this week when my bride and I received a lovely multi-coloured, bilingual brochure from Health Canada. Printed on heavy duty paper, and festooned with appropriate logos, it was titled “Healthy Home Challenge.”
The card included a drawing of a house showing the interior layout and we were encouraged to go on line and “SPOT THE HEATLTH HAZARDS!”
The advice we were given on the card itself boiled down to things such as reading labels on chemical cleaning products and disposing of them safely, taking your shoes off when you enter the house because of the dirt and chemicals you might have picked up outside and airing out your house on a regular basis. Well duh! Does the term common sense ring a bell? Any one of our mothers could have and probably did say the same thing.
The question here is how much did Health Canada spend on the design, production and mailing of this drivel? Make-work nonsense at its finest.