Agriculture Minister Complains that His Staff Don’t Expense As Much to Taxpayers as He Does
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz is hopping mad. He put a civil servant in Guelph, one Bill Teeter, in charge of a spending review in Ottawa, had him travel back and forth for a year, and in the process let him rack up $100,000 in expenses that were then charged to taxpayers. Now that the number has come out, Ritz says he is not responsible for the behaviour of his employees and has ordered the agency to “go back through and identify all costs” — sort of redundant given that we already have that number — and denounces them for racking up such an enormous bill.
Which is all to the good, as far as it goes, except for this: Gerry Ritz is being a wee bit hypocritical here. (Gosh the media has short memories, don’t they?) In his last four quarterly expense reports, Mr. Ritz reported $140,835 in travel costs. That’s in addition to the $121,000 in travel expenses and $22,000 in accommodations he reported as an MP. All told, it adds up to $283,835 per year. Basically, Ritz is mad that his subordinate spent less taxpayers’ money than he does.
Plus, presumably unlike Teeter, Gerry gets scared at airports, so he can’t travel without a retinue of staffers to hold his hand and brush away his tears. Going back to those same reports, we see that his staff reported “accompanying the Minister” on trips costing a total of $187,251 over the course of the year.
If we add those totals together, which seems only fair, then they add up to $471,086. Ritz thinks Teeter broke the rules by spending around one dollar in travel costs for every five that Ritz spends.
We can go on, since I’m feeling nasty. Ritz was one of the top spenders on cars and chauffeurs last year, too; his driver racked up a total of $27,800 in overtime alone. And then there’s the MP office expenditure of $250,000 (in addition to his MP travel expenses, which I noted above), plus his ministerial staff salaries, which I don’t know (but there’s a dozen of them, God knows why), plus his MP’s salary of $157,731, plus his ministerial salary of $75,516, plus a bonus $2000 car allowance (even though his car and driver already get paid for out of the public purse).
What’s Teeter make? I’m guessing somewhere in the high five or low six figures per year. Yes, I think we can agree he’s the real threat to responsible public spending here.
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sushi
$471,086. / 365 = $1,290.65
That is $1,290 in travel costs for each day of the year. Does this man never go to church?
Few EI recipients receive that much in benefits per month.
Under the principle of ministerial accountabilty Ritz is responsible for all the actviities of every member of his department. If he cannot execute this responsibility properly he needs to resign his position.
If Harper cannot execute effective oversight of his cabinet then Harper should also resign.
And the mainstream media will work the population into a lather over EI claims in marginal communities trying to survive on seasonal work.
Lenny
The Harper govt wants to add more mps, how much more is that going to cost us? Speaking of EI it’s much more difficult to collect than most people know about and you have to pay it back once you get your job back. I know of at least four communities that are losing or have lost their town’s only employer and it hasn’t made the news. You know you’re in trouble when the Russian Foreign Ministry releases a statement on how autocratic Canada is, stepping on peoples’ rights.
crf
I doubt Teeter actually wanted to travel as much as he did.
What the press ought to focus on is not his expenses, but whether or not he was doing any useful work. The 56 million in “efficiencies” he is said to have helped find.
Lorne
And Simon Houpt at The Globe has the audacity to suggest we don’t have a dynamic blogosphere in Canada?
Sixth Estate
crf — Whether he wanted to or not, so far as I can see the job gave him no choice. It’s worth asking why a person stationed in Guelph was required to make routine commutes to Ottawa to attend meetings in person, but that decision was made by whoever hired Teeter. As a former resident of the place I can’t imagine anyone viewing two work trips to Ottawa as a pleasure, let alone dozens of such trips.
It’s not clear that he came up with a sizeable amount in savings that an executive already in the Ottawa class couldn’t (i.e. I’m not sure how they selected people for the review process). But in any case, there is something concrete to show for it. Unlike, say, the vast majority of Ritz’s trips, which are mostly to deliver press announcements of government funding.
myna lee johnstone
fiscally irresponsible
dennis davey
Ritz is so far over his head as Agri. Min. its pathetic. I am a follower of Question Period in Parliament, and this guy is getting a free ride by opposition Agri critics when it comes to questioning him. When he is asked a question, he responds CONSISTENTLY with the same old bunk, just like a broken record “This Will Assist Our Hard Working Farmers.” He needs a entourage ,frankly because they are the ones who KNOW what the hell is going on. The real scary part of this whole thing is upcoming budget cuts to the cfia, you know the people who assure our food is safe.
Sixth Estate
Actually, under “Canada’s New Government,” companies were permitted to run their own inspection programs. Then CFIA just inspects the inspectors.
But I take your point.