Flaherty can't even balance his office budget

[DrGreenthumb]

Flaherty breached Treasury Board guidelines by overspending by more than $430,000 last year, according to government documents.

Flaherty spent $2,868,222 on his ministerial office in 2009-10, while Treasury Board rules cap spending for ministers with extra regional responsibility and a parliamentary secretary at $2,437,370.

"I'm amazed," said Liberal Treasury Board critic Siobhan Coady. "If you can't control your own budget for your own department, how can we be assured that you are going to control the budget for the whole country?"

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2010/12/06/16450766.html

[wyly]

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2010/12/06/16450766.html

how is this a surprise, this was the same guy who said canada would have a surplus...

[Jerry J. Fortin]

how is this a surprise, this was the same guy who said canada would have a surplus...

I maintain that government spending is the only issue worthy of public concern. It is the foundation of everything the government does and is the reason we pay so much in taxes. This guy, and very damned nearly every other clown that has held the job in the past has failed to come to grips with this reality. Shame on them. Having elected these overlords to manage the public trust has proven one major thing, and that is shame on us for doing this our society. We can, and truly should do better than this. In this day and age of information transfer and public access, with our level of education, how did we let government slip this far away from us? Immense lobby efforts control both public and political agendas. Governments are beholding to the very banks supposedly used for commercial purposes. Entire nations have been enslaved in debt, let alone the individual citizens. All the while monetary systems and institutions amass vast fortunes on leveraged credit and debt holdings producing nothing and paying virtually no taxes on corporate earnings. These are not the things of a conspiracy theory, merely factual information that is easily researchable.

The most harsh reality of all is that there is only one tax payer, the living breathing citizen. That is because our governments value money more than the individual.

[Saipan]

He had to put some money into brown envelopes for his liberal friends in Quebec

[Topaz]

In my view half the blame goes to the voters, both Tories and Libs. For the Tories supporters who will vote Tory all in the name of the party no matter what they do and say and the absent Liberals voters who don't vote. We know from the past the Liberals could hold a majority government but for whatever reasons, liberals are not voting and by NOT voting this is what we get for a government. A bunch of novices that don't know what they are doing and spending because its not their money! The minister left Ontario with a 5 billion debt, so why would anyone in their right mind have him as a financial minister?