Frugality goes out the window

Liberals spend while borrowing to keep lights on

The Conservatives were not immune to extravagance on the public dime.

Who can forget Bev Oda upgrading herself to London’s Savoy Hotel and then ordering $16 orange juice?

But by and large, they were pikers when compared with the Liberals, a political team so proficient in entitlement spending that if there was a trophy awarded, they’d be allowed to keep it.

Every week, a crop of answers to written questions from opposition MPs is tabled in the House of Commons. A glance through this week’s submissions alone suggests a more relaxed attitude toward spending than many taxpayers might be comfortable with.

Bev Shipley, a southwestern Ontario Conservative MP, asked how many times ministers and staff have spent more than $500 a night on hotel rooms. The answers indicate a number of ministers have stayed in hotels where the towels are so fluffy they couldn’t be crammed into a suitcase, were you of a criminal mind.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, the justice minister, stayed in a Hilton Hotel in New York at a cost of $758 a night, nearly $100 more than Oda’s famous stay at the Savoy.

Jim Carr, the natural resources minister, enjoyed a $688-a-night sojourn at the Hilton in Houston.

Catherine McKenna, the environment minister, was a guest at the $597-a-night Willard Intercontinental in Washington, D.C.

This is not the crime of the century – ministers are not expected to stay at the Super 8 on the highway. The National Joint Council Travel Directive states that government employees should stay in a single room in a safe environment, conveniently located and comfortably equipped.

But spending more than 700 bucks a night on a hotel room sends a message to staff and the public service that taxpayers’ dollars are expendable.

“When ministers implicitly signal that it’s OK for spending to go up, what incentive is there for the public service to tighten their belts?” asked Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Other written answers tabled this week suggest that departments are taking their lead from the top.

Randy Hoback, a Saskatchewan MP, asked what government departments spent on external speechwriting. The answer revealed that the company responsible for writing the budget speech delivered by Finance Minister Bill Morneau was paid $11,300.

A firm that penned a speech for Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr received $8,932.

The going rate paid by Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains to another company on at least three occasions was $2,985.

Then there was the question asked by Alberta Conservative MP Michael Cooper on money spent on promotional products at trade fairs and conferences.

The answer revealed the taxpayer stumped up for $4,000 on air fresheners, $5,600 on branded tote bags, $5,340 on custom tattoos and $1,897 for animal-shaped vinyl decals at the behest of the Environment Department.

Again, this is not to suggest that the Liberals have invented wasteful spending. It has been marbled throughout governments of all stripes since the Egyptians first defined their borders.

But we do know that this government intends to spend more than its predecessor — a lot more.

By the time the Conservatives left office, program expenses as a percentage of gross domestic product were bumping around 13 per cent.

By contrast, the Liberal government’s own numbers show spending rising to 14.6 per cent of GDP over the next three years.

A paper released this week by Brian Lee Crowley and Sean Speer at the Macdonald Laurier Institute suggests that most of this spending cannot be called investment or infrastructure, but is run of the mill government expenditure.

Speer and Crowley concede one-third of the $99 billion in cumulative deficits in the years to 2019-20 are a result of lower revenues — commodity price volatility, Alberta wildfires and so on.

But the other two thirds is due to higher spending, with the Liberals driving up program expenses by nearly five per cent annually as they claim to “invest in our future.”

The Liberal narrative is that infrastructure is a major source of that new spending and will pay for itself.

But a closer look suggests that even by the government’s elastic definition of infrastructure, only $22 billion falls into that category.

“Even based on its own accounting, Ottawa’s fiscal plan is overwhelmingly one that increases government borrowing to spend on salaries, benefits and feel-good projects with limited stimulus value,” wrote Speer and Crowley.

Or as Wudrick put it, we are borrowing to keep the lights on.