

The Canadian Press





OTTAWA - Last summer's billion-dollar G8-G20 summit has won a spoof award from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The federation annually hands out the Teddy Waste Awards for "the best of the worst in government waste."

It's the 13th year for the less-than-coveted awards, which are in the form of gilded pig figurines.

"The federal Teddy goes to organizers of the G8-G20 summits for managing to spend a billion dollars on a political chin-wag, ironically organized to discuss how to trim government over-spending," Kevin Gaudet, the group's federal director, told a Parliament Hill news conference.

The Teddies are meant to cite the biggest federal, provincial and municipal spending boondoggles.

Ontario got the provincial Teddy for paying an estimated $56 million in severance for tax bureaucrats who didn't actually lose their jobs.

Gaudet said the tax collectors got an average of $45,000 each "for changing their business cards from Ontario PST collector to federal HST collector."

Edmonton was cited in the municipal category for spending $5,000 on a contest for the best haiku about riding the bus. Gaudet said the city was also paying an official poet laureate $5,000 a year to write about Edmonton in verse.

Former Toronto mayor David Miller won the lifetime achievement award.

"As mayor, Miller grew the city's operating budget by 44 per cent, $2.8 billion, increased the city's debt by more than $1 billion and increased property taxes every year well beyond the rate of inflation," Gaudet said.

"Over the years, David Miller has provided so much material for the Teddies we will see if future municipal nominations will suffer with his departure."

The awards are named after Ted Weatherill, a former federal bureaucrat who was fired for outrageous expenses in 1999.