Feds Pay Consultant $20 M to Find Savings

Ladies and gentlemen, the definition of irony.

The Conservative government has hired a consulting firm, Deloitte, to help them find ways to cut spending. Sounds legit! We bet it's a sensible, fiscally prudent decision that holy crap the firm's charging us $90,000 a day for their services? So basically the equivalent of a year's salary for a top-level bureaucrat? Every day? UNTIL MARCH 31?!?! FOR A TOTAL OF $19.8 MILLION?!?!!? We can think of one area that might be due for a cleaving. Also, isn't that basically Tony Clement's job description as Treasury Board President? At least it follows his fine tradition of spending money wisely. These guys, sometimes. It's not like $20 million is a lot of money (in federal spending terms, at least. In just about every other regard, yep, that's a boatload of cash right there), and getting each department to trim its budget by five per cent surely isn't that easy, but again, that's what the Treasury Board President is for, and he only costs us $200,000 and change a year. Whatever. We're moving to Denmark.