
A dubious award for a dubious character.
Former Thompson Nicola Regional District CAO Sukh Gill has been given a Teddy award from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The Teddy Waste Awards ‘celebrates’ the best of the worst in government waste uncovered over the past year.
Federal Director of the CTF, Franco Terrazano, was on the NL Morning News and pointed to some of the money Gill blew while with the TNRD “He expensed about $500,000 over five years on fancy meals, jewellery but the big ticket item that really caught our eyes, and many tax payers eyes, is the thousands of dollars that was expensed on a champagne room in Whistler during the Union of BC Municipalities Conference back in 2018”
He was asked if picking Gill was a challenging decision. “No, not at all. This was an easy one, he blew the competition out of the water.”
The Teddy, a pig-shaped trophy the CTF annually awards to governments’ worst waste offenders, is named after Ted Weatherill, a former federal appointee who was fired in 1999 for submitting a raft of dubious expense claims, including a $700 lunch for two.
Terrazano joked that Gill’s spending was so bad, they could change the name of the award. “There’s a good argument for us to change the name of our awards show to the Gillies after the crazy amount of expenses that he did.”
Handing the award to Gill was a no brainer according to Terrazano. “No, this one took the cake. It was a very, very easy decision. We had tougher provincial, federal and lifetime achievement award decisions to make but no, Sukh Gill really took the cake with this huge expense tab”
Gill was given a severance package worth half a million dollars with Terrazano saying “wouldn’t you like that slap on the wrist?”
As for the other award winners. “We give out four. Lifetime achievement, Federal Award, Provincial Award and of course the Municipal one” (which was given to Gill).
The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Canada’s Climate Delegation. “Canada sent 276 delegates to the (United Nation’s) COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.”
“We had the largest G7 delegation, which is crazy because we sent more delegates than host, the United Kingdom.”:
“Even more bizarre, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland stayed in the wrong city. The conference was in Glasgow, she stayed in Edinburgh and then she billed taxpayers $3,000 on a luxury chauffeur service between the cities. So, guess we’re over scratching our heads wondering if Freeland just forgot to check Google Maps before booking her ticket.”
National Capital Commission took the Federal Award for spending $11 million to renovate the prime minister’s country retreat, Harrington Lake. Included within the tab is a $2.5-million backup cottage for the prime minister and more than $700,000 spent renovating the lake house’s kitchen.
Investissement Québec took the Provincial Award for giving $380 million to the Airbus A220 project, formerly known as the Bombardier C-Series. Back in 2015, the Crown corporation put $1.3 billion into Bombardier’s C-Series in exchange for partial ownership. The $1.3-billion investment is now worthless, according to the latest annual report.