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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Secrecy Surrounds Tourism Office Move
The Liberals are hard at work shoring up the vote in Vancouver - by moving offices around , with costs kept out of reach of Freedom of Information.
THE FEDERAL government will spend at least $15 million to move Canada's tourism office from Ottawa to Vancouver, but taxpayers are in the dark about how the cash will be spent.A Sun request for projected costs related to the controversial move under the Access to Information Act was declined.
[...]
But the Liberal government made the politically motivated move without a cost-benefit analysis, [Broadbent] charged [...] "It's silly Liberal smokescreen about creating jobs in the west," he said.
Of course, no one working for government is ever required to move.
Gaston Lampron, VP of the Professional Institute of the Public Service Alliance, said only five of the 100 staff have expressed interest in moving to Vancouver.Higher office and labour costs combined with hefty compensation payments could drive the price tag as high as $40 million, he said.
Posted by Kate McMillan on July 21, 2005 in Canadian Politics | Permalink
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Comments
Vancouver is where the tourism dollars are flowing. It only makes sense.
Posted by: Gamblog | 2005-07-21 1:14:53 PM
And all the government workers who move to Vancouver will be relocated by the big Liberal Party donor, Royal LePage Relocations.
Reloscam!
Posted by: walking eagle | 2005-07-21 3:58:26 PM
Check out workopolis.com you will find a number (32 at last count) of well paying (some in the 70K+ range) jobs listed in Ottawa but only until December then you are expected to move to Vancouver. This means that the staff in Ottawa has already moved on to other jobs. If I start work today am I entitled to moving expenses knowing full well that the job requires a move in 5 months?
Posted by: Brent Colbert | 2005-07-22 7:52:51 PM
"Vancouver is where the tourism dollars are flowing. It only makes sense."
Yes indeed, and we all know that the people running tourist operations in BC are a bunch of mental defectives, right? I mean, why else would they need an entire bureaucracy to be flown in from Ottawa, just to show them how to do it? They're smart enough to build hotels, build and operate bus companies and airlines, prepare and serve thousands of meals per day, publish brochures, place ads in dozens of languages in hundreds of cities all over the world, find and expose to millions of tourists the most jaw-dropping scenery on earth. But they're a little dopey when it comes to ... well I mean, they're just not so good at ... they need a little help with ...
Sorry Gamblog - refresh my memory. What is it again that all those career government bureaucrats do so well, related to tourism, that is somehow beyond the abilities of the hundreds of thousands of British Columbian entrepreneurs, managers and workers who have spent their entire adult lives working in the tourism business?
Posted by: Justzumgai | 2005-07-22 9:27:56 PM
Tweet!
Justzumgai 1, Gamblog 0.
Carry on.
Posted by: Tony | 2005-07-22 10:27:53 PM
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