Like a bad reality TV show, Canada’s People Registry threatens not only to bring Orwellian databases further into our day-to-day living, but to out-boondoggle the mother of all boondoggles — the federal gun registry.
As if you needed any clearer signalling, it is learned that Liberal spender, er, MP, Denis Coderre spearheaded the unpopular Immigrant ID Card Program even in the face of waning support from his own ranks. In doing so, Coderre headed a comittee which spent nearly $1 million for an invitation-only meeting last year on the benefits of a proposed national identity card.
The two-day forum was supposed to cost about $375,000 but the bill rose to $986,985.01, thanks in large part to the use of outside consultants to plan and promote the event.
One outlandish per-diem was the $27,000 paid to ID Card proponent, Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz.
How is it that the Liberal government can tell us, presumably with a straight face, that things are different now?
How is it, when claims of fiscal prudence are cornerstones of the prime minister’s Speech To The Trone,
- our Languages Commishoner can fly — at taxpayer’s expense — to the UK to talk to English-speaking people about the importance of our two-language model, while…
- a Liberal MP can spend $27,000 to pay a lawyer to come speak to Canadians about a biometric ID Card few want, even those in the MPs own party?
Money only flows one way in Ottawa. Down river.