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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (6409)	11/17/2005 12:05:42 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37260

We need a softer kinder electorate. Come on people let's give these fols a raise and a tax paid vacation somewhere hot: Martin's Liberals plagued with bad morale report: Federal bureaucracy being driven to 'breakdown', says ex-deputy minister Peter O'Neil Vancouver Sun Thursday, November 17, 2005 OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal government is plagued by rock-bottom morale, excessive spending aimed at bribing Canadians, and a string of "stupid" and "foolish" decisions that aren't in the public interest, senior federal bureaucrats were told at a private conference last week. The grim message came from former deputy minister Harry Swain, who said the federal bureaucracy is being driven to "breakdown" by unnecessary and costly rules brought in by Martin leading up to Justice John Gomery's report on the sponsorship scandal. "Ridiculous and surreal impositions are raining on the public service from management theorists and politicians -- sometimes the same person -- seeking to bury Gomery," Swain, now executive director of the Canadian Institute for Climate Studies at the University of Victoria, told the bureaucrats. Swain, according to a copy of his speech obtained Wednesday by The Vancouver Sun, noted that Auditor-General Sheila Fraser had said the sponsorship mess was caused by the breaking -- not absence -- of rules. "Two hundred and thirty-eight new rules, plus legions of comptrollers and auditors, will not prevent malfeasance if a prime minister decides that a higher cause justifies playing fast and loose with the rules." He also blasted the creation of the super-agency Services Canada, the planned sell-off of $3.5 billion in federal buildings, the exclusion of small Canadian businesses from government procurement, and the massive and unnecessary increase in internal audits and rules following the sponsorship scam. The bureaucracy's slide towards "total constipation" will only be halted when bureaucrats highlight to politicians and their top bureaucratic advisers the costs to taxpayers of excessive red tape and endless audits. He predicted that parliamentarians, who have demanded better program management, will be "appalled to discover that the red tape of 'management improvement' was eating a huge and ever-larger fraction of the resources they have taxed Canadians for." Only by highlighting the costs can the federal bureaucracy avoid the "system breakdown, the total constipation, that would be the inevitable consequence of the full implementation of the recently announced reforms." Swain, 63, warned that chronic Liberal over-spending to bribe voters will only end when an expected U.S.-inspired economic recession, and possibly a Quebec referendum, sharply reduce federal tax revenues. Public Works Minister Scott Brison, whose initiatives were a prime target of Swain's comments, said Wednesday he hadn't read the speech and was therefore unable to comment. Swain's address was delivered to participants at The ADM Forum, an annual gathering of assistant and associate deputy ministers in the federal government. Speaking on a morning panel, he noted that bureaucrats were hoping when Martin took office in 2004 that it would be a time of creativity following the "dreary, policy-free final years" of predecessor Jean Chretien's administration. Those hopes, he said, have long since vanished. "All my friends tell me this town has never been so miserable," said Swain. poneil1@hotmail.com - - - AMONG SWAIN'S CRITICISMS: - Martin took "an axe" to the equalization program simply to send more money to Atlantic Canada for political purposes. And he sent $41 billion to the provinces "to solve the insoluble and wholly provincial problem of [health care] waiting times." The Martin government's "real major policy shift," therefore, has been losing control of spending. "Bucks and bodies are flowing like water here on the banks of the Rideau" River," he said. - He slammed new rules requiring that the federal government narrow its purchasing to a smaller group of large companies, thereby forcing smaller firms to work with the main contractors. "What it did, of course, was take tens of thousands of small businesses all across the country -- many of them owned by active and politically engaged citizens -- and tell them that they now had to slipstream some large company, a company which raised the little guy's prices by 15 to 30 per cent for the privilege of riding on its standing-offer coattails. Gosh, imagine Liberals inventing toll-gating." - Swain described as "silliness" Brison's plan to sell some, or all, of Ottawa's $3.5 billion in real estate holdings -- and then lease those buildings back. "And your people think their cubicles are small now," he joked, adding: "It's a slam dunk that the vapourish 'savings' that are apparently already booked cannot survive examination by rational people." - He scorched the already-announced creation of Service Canada, the new "one-stop" federal agency created earlier this year to deliver hundreds of federal programs and services from numerous separate departments. This "son-of-Public Works ... would be as efficient as Piggly-Wiggly but for the fact that they are unpractised in these new realms and hence take twice as long and cost three times as much." Ran with fact box "Among Swain's criticisms:", which has been appended to the end of the story. © The Vancouver Sun 2005