As a teenager during the 1990’s, I remember buying a music album from the unfortunately named but quite talented Canadian pop group, Barenaked Ladies. The big hit on that particular CD was the title If I Had a Million Dollars.
The catchy tune listed a bunch of funny things the musicians would purchase for their lady friends if they were lucky enough to have a million dollars some day. For example, as the lyrics went, ‘I’d buy you a fur coat – but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel.’
The song also used to drive me a bit crazy though because most of the items the boys wanted to buy were a total waste of money. From monkeys to llamas to John Merick’s remains, I couldn’t imagine spending all that cash on such useless items.
Well, it appears the ‘Ladies’ have met their match and then some. In what has to be one of the most painful examples of why the words ‘Progressive Conservative’ and ‘fiscally conservative’ should rarely be used in the same paragraph, the government of Alberta is planning to spend a total of $27 million on…drum roll please…an empty warehouse to store artifacts currently found in the Royal Alberta Museum.
When I heard this story, three questions came to mind. First off, how on earth could it cost $27 million to store a relatively small amount of artifacts?
Second, how during a time when the government is running a record $7.5 billion cash deficit, did a new storage warehouse become a priority for the people of Alberta?
And third - if I had to choose where to spend $27 million dollars of taxpayer money, what would I spend it on (not quite as catchy as the title to Barenaked’s #1 hit song, but I digress)?
So, how did this incredibly expensive warehouse come to be? In 2005, the Alberta government decided to give $2.3 million in grants to a private group wanting to build a meat packing plant by Stony Plain.
Unfortunately, the project failed (yet another example of what happens when government tries to pick winners and losers). Now, this is when the story goes from bad to loopy.
The provincial government then spent tens of thousands suing the company for the lost grant money and won a $2.5 million court decision. Of course, they didn’t collect a penny because the company was bankrupt.
It doesn’t stop there. In 2008, the government bought the shell of the half built meat packing plant for $12 million thereby ensuring that the bankrupt company’s secured creditors were partially bailed out of their losses. So for $14.5 million, the people of Alberta became the proud owners of a half built meat packing plant with no purpose…but it doesn’t stop there.
Minister Lindsay Blackett and his Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit have now decided they want to spend an additional $13 million to retrofit the 65,000 square foot packing plant into a state-of-the-art storage warehouse for Alberta’s cultural artifacts (I guess the Royal Alberta Museum is getting kind of cluttered). The completion date is scheduled for July of 2012.
If you’ve lost track, that brings the total of this boondoggle to a cool $27.5 million.
I don’t dispute the need to ensure important artifacts are stored properly, but can anyone with any fiscal sense justify how this initiative could cost so much? This is one of those examples where contracting a task out to a private facility may have saved the government – oh, I don’t know – $26 million.
And then there’s the timing. How is this venture a priority during a time when the provincial cash deficit is $7.5 billion?
Twenty-seven million dollars is enough to build a new elementary school for Airdrie. It could finance the salaries of 30 teachers for 10 years. It could be put towards building the airport tunnel, purchasing new MRI machines, or (gasp) used to reduce our record deficit…frankly, there are probably about a thousand better uses for that kind of money.
If I had a million dollars? Perhaps the Barenaked Ladies should have set their sights a little higher. They likely would have spent the money more wisely, too.
