The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) recently held its 12th annual ‘Teddy Waste Awards’ ceremony to recognize the best of the worst government waste.
The Teddy award ceremony is named after Ted Weatherill, a former federal bureaucrat who was fired for outrageous expenses in 1999. Each year the CTF holds the ceremony to recognize a government group, public office holder, civil servant, department or agency that epitomizes senseless waste.
‘We hold the ceremony each year to educate the public about government waste and highlight fat that needs to be trimmed,’ said a CTF representative. ‘The event also helps hold bureaucrats and politicians accountable for their decisions.’
The 2010 Teddy winners and nominees included:
- C$1.5 million spent on unused hotel rooms at the Francophone Summit in Quebec.
- Staff who accidentally sold Queen’s silver for C$4000 and then spent nearly C$100,000 getting it back.
- C$1.4 million spent trying to locate C$20 million worth of ‘missing gold’ which was not actually missing.
- One public office holder who expensed C$30,000 in annual cell phone bills.
- A C$1.4 million ‘promo website’ which only attracted 53,000 visitors – costing C$26 per web visitor.
Here in Austria, home of ISWA’s headquarters, we would have no difficulty finding nominees for this kind of waste award either: from the CEO of an ailing national bank getting €4.5 million for six month’s work and spending €32 million on external consultants during that period ... to the 35,000-seater football stadium which has an average attendance of 500 spectators per game.
It’s probably a bit more difficult to find nominees for an award designed to honour excellent waste communication campaigns … Or for an award which has been designed to honour a publication, article or book deemed to be exceptional in its contribution to solid waste management. But ISWA likes this kind of challenge!
Every year we invite members and non-members to send us their nominations for the ISWA Communication Award and the ISWA Publication Award. Have a look at our website www.iswa.org to find out more. Deadlines for submission are 15 June for the Communication Award and 15 July for the Publication Award.
We look forward to receiving your nominations!
Hermann Koller
e-mail: hkoller@iswa.org
