The Trudeau government, Bombardier and PEI tourism were among the “winners” of the Teddy Waste Awards handed out by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to highlight outrageous cases of wasteful government spending.
The tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony are named after Ted Weatherill, the former chairman of the Canadian Labour Relations Board, who racked up nearly $150,000 in expenses – including $700 on a lunch – and was fired in the late 1990s.
READ MORE: Seven MPs accepted nearly $780,000 in transition allowances
CTF director Aaron Wudrick, dressed in a full tuxedo, announced the winners during a press conference in Ottawa Wednesday along with a person in a pig costume to symbolize the allegedly egregious waste of tax payer money.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were honoured with the federal Teddy for Canada’s delegation to the climate change conference in Paris this past November. The CTF said the total bill for taxpayers to send 283 delegates to the 2015 event has yet to be calculated, but the costs from one ministry alone ran $282,000.
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“It seems counterproductive to stick nearly 300 people on green-house gas spewing planes to fly them to a conference to figure out how to cut greenhouse gasses,” Wudrick said in a statement. “There’s simply no need for such a large delegation, especially considering even the United States sent less than half as many people.”
Also nominated was what the CTF dubbed the “Severance Seven.” Global News was the first to report on the seven new MPs who accepted nearly $780,000 in transition packages from their former employers before moving to the House of Commons.
READ MORE: PEI tourism guide redesigned after apparent bulge on cover
At the provincial level, Prince Edward Island’s Department of Tourism and Culture won for the 180,000 copies of its 2015 tourism guide that featured a man photographed on the cover, relaxing in the sun, that appeared to show him with visible erection.
“This was a pretty firm example of government oversight,” Wudrick joked.
WATCH: PEI wins CTF award for wasteful spending for their ‘bulge’ tourism ad
The municipal Teddy went to the City of Calgary which spent an extra $246,000 on a project to embed LED lights on its new Forest Lawn Lift Station that changes colour depending on how fast the station is pumping waste water. Area residents have dubbed the station the “poop palace.”
Montreal-based aerospace company Bombardier won the lifetime achievement Teddy. Bombardier, which slashed 7,000 jobs last week, was honoured by the CTF as it has accepted more than $3.8 billion in loans from both the federal and Quebec government and could receive more handouts from the Liberals.
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