Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Harper needs to get grip on spending priorities

Two items appeared in the news in the past week that ought to cause taxpayers to demand, “Wait! What in heaven’s name is going on?”

Both concern the federal government and its ability — or inability — to make sure that precious public funds are spent carefully and wisely. The first item was an article by David Pugliese, the very good military-affairs writer for the Ottawa Citizen. Pugliese published the piece on his Defence Watch blog.

In it, he reported the Harper government is planning between $1 million and $5 million to hire an outside accounting firm to — wait for it! — tell the cabinet how much it will actually have to spend for those F-35 jets it decided to buy back in 2006. Although the decision was made nearly six years ago, no contract has been signed yet.

The defence department, desperate to get the jets (on an untendered, sole-source contract with Lockeed Martin in the United States), has been low-balling the cost from the beginning. The only credible estimates have come from the auditor general, who put the tab at more than $25 billion and the parliamentary budget officer who thinks it will be close to $30 billion. Both figures are more than $10 billion higher than the defence establishment is prepared to admit.

That the government is now calling for proposals by July 9 from accounting companies to find out what is going on with the F-35 file tells us two things. First, the cabinet does not trust the senior military and departmental bureaucrats to produce real cost estimates. Second, the prime minister does not trust the ability of Defence Minister Peter MacKay to get the truth out of his department.

There is no earthly reason why Stephen Harper should not be able to pick up the phone and say to the minister: “Peter, I want accurate numbers for the F-35 on my desk by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. Then I want you and your deputy minister in my office by 10 o’clock to tell me how you are going to guarantee those numbers. We’re not going to waste millions on outside accountants to do your job for you.”

That will not happen, although it should.

The second, tangentially related, news item came out of Toronto city hall where the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, Karen Stintz, and her vice-chair, Glenn De Baeremaeker, came up with a bold proposal to expand and modernize public transit in Canada’s largest city. Their OneCity plan would see six new subway lines, 10 light rail lines and five streetcar and bus lines — a total of 175 kilometres of transit.

If OneCity comes to pass — and Mayor Rob Ford is not at all amused by such creative thinking — it would mean Toronto would have to surrender its title as the gridlock capital of Canada. It would transform the everyday lives of people trying to get to work, and to the extent that it reduces congestion on the roads, it would be a boon for business, too.

The estimated price-tag: $30 billion — about the same as the F-35s — over 30 years, which also happens to be the anticipated operational life of the jets. (In both cases, final costs are bound to exceed estimates, because that’s the way it goes with very big projects. But they are in the same ballpark.) After 30 years, the jets would be worn out, obsolete, ready to be replaced. After 30 years, Toronto would still have its subways, light rail and streetcar lines.

I’m not suggesting it’s an either/or proposition — either jets or subways. What I am suggesting is that someone in authority needs to take a hard look at national spending priorities. Which would benefit Canadians more — 65 stealth fighter jets that do not really suit Canada’s military needs or a modern, efficient transit system for Canada’s most important city?

That “someone in authority” might be the prime minister, who is paid to make the big decisions.

Original Article
Source: the record
Author: Geoffry Stevens 

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