Taxpayer group lampoons tobacco buyout 'waste'

Monday, April 2, 2012

It is an annual Parliament Hill spectacle – a pig mascot, a man in a tuxedo, a woman in a slinky black dress and the "presentation" of awards for government waste.

The show, meant to emulate the Oscars, is put on by the anti-government Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, a non-membership group claiming to speak for downtrodden taxpayers.

The "Teddy Waste Awards" are named after former federal bureaucrat Ted Weatherill, fired in 1999 for running up lavish expense account tabs.

This year, the big "winner" was the federal government's 2008 buyout program for Ontario tobacco producers, a $284 million program criticized by the federal auditor general for its loopholes and poor design.

"This year's big-budget spectacular is an epic multi-generational saga of family secrets, greed and skullduggery in tobacco country," reads the fake over-heated movie trailer promo.

The auditor general complained that many buyout payments went to quota holders who often sold their farm to relatives and then went to work on the same farm as employees.

The point of the program was to remove the quota debt from farmers and convert the tobacco industry into a sector that grew tobacco only on contract to processors.

Those who took the payout were supposed to exit the industry.

There were ways around that including interfamily deals that saw the Ontario tobacco crop actually increase after the buyout. BF