The following commentary represents the opinion of the writer only and does not necessarily reflect the views of the management of Corus Entertainment.

And The Loser Is...You!

One and half million dollars for unused hotel rooms in Quebec City. Ten million dollars for M.P. junk mail. One point four million dollars to locate $20 million in missing gold. Ontario E-health bungling - $1 billion. Those are just some of the "winners" of the 2010 Teddy Waste Awards handed out by The Canadian Taxpayer's Federation. All of that money (and there is a lot more where that came from) was flushed down the toilet by people that you and I put into office. And it's not only federal and provincial politicians who haven't noticed that we are in the midst of a recession; municipal politicians are also very good at spending other people's money. In Toronto, council paid residents to act and look like homeless people so that they could count the number of homeless people in order to better help the unemployed homeless. Actual unemployed homeless people were not allowed to apply for the jobs, even though they already looked and acted like they were homeless and needed the work. Calgary city council billed taxpayers over $6,000 for dry cleaning. Some members of the Peguis Band Council in Manitoba paid themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to oversee a reserve of just 7,200 people. Here in Cornwall, we've watched our city council spend thousand of dollars from their expense accounts on charities. This idiocy knows no bounds and crosses all political levels and persuasions. Our job as voters is to stay informed of such wasteful spending and then complain to the abusers - loudly.

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On the next edition:
A Cornwall City Councillor has some creative ideas to present to city hall that may help solve a few lingering community problems. Hear the details on Thursday on Cornwall Today. - Click here for more