Feds penny-pinched on science libraries while lavishing funds on religion and oil
Beginning in 2008 — at the height of
the global financial crisis — the federal government spent over $20 million on
Christian religious groups and schools, including $495,600 for
the Wycliffe Bible Translators in Langley, B.C. and $3.7 million
transferred from federal funds to “Youth for Christ” in Winnipeg. It also set
up a $20 million
"Office for Religious Freedom" and has been spending
public funds to promote "religious freedom" in countries like
Nigeria.
Feds poured $2 million into a fake lake in preparation for the 2010
G20 summit in Toronto and $15 million into the Canada School for Energy and
Environment, which is accused of being a "one man advocacy centre" for former PMO staffer Bruce Carson, who is now on trial for
alleged influence peddling and illegal lobbying.
It rewarded senior government
bureaucrats across several ministries with large bonuses for under spending their budgets, and even considered buying 20,000 custom-printed stress balls for
staffers at the Department of National Defence.
Yet as the federal government lavished
funds in these areas, it subjected many of its departments to a “strategic
review” that demanded they find ways to slash millions of dollars from the
federal budget.
And more than 10 federal departments
closed or consolidated their libraries as part of the government’s Deficit
Action Reduction Plan (DRAP), which downsized the budgets of most federal
agencies between five and 10 per cent. Librarians were fired, book shelves were
gutted, and thousands of volumes of literature were left in the dump.
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