AYLMER, QUEBEC | Of people who try to understand public spending, I must be the dimmest. It's as if budgets and spending decisions are written in a weird language using the Cyrillic alphabet.

More likely, there's a secret message, a subtext, in every fiscal announcement. For example, they say the three-day Montebello summit last summer with Harper, Bush, and Caldéron will reach $30 million in policing costs alone. That's ten million per day, or about a million dollars an hour. For security.

How did they spend a million dollars in an hour? That's more than almost any of us will have to show for ourselves at the end of our entire careers.

That's $500,000 in half an hour, or $250,000 consumed in fifteen minutes. This is not an entire nation's three-day defense bill, it's for a few acres around a big hotel down the highway from us. You drive through Montebello in a few minutes.

What was the benefit we bought at this price over a single weekend?

Our political leaders agreed to this summit because big-business leaders wanted it many years ago and it has become a ceremony, signaling the blending of our continent into a single super-state, something out of Brave New World. The police loved every billable minute.

Our leaders were "thinking ahead," "solving problems before they arise," and were "facilitating business."

And us? We were paying $250,000 for every fifteen minutes of it. That's a lot of tax returns used up every fifteen minutes.

Obviously, I'm the dummy here.

Another example: the health budget for West Quebec, revealed a few weeks ago as $500-plus million per year. Given that there are fewer than 500,000 people to take care of in West Quebec, that means over a million dollars per person, every year.

It's tempting to say, "just give me my million and let me make the best of it for the year; I won't go near a public hospital."

It would be outrageous for an ADQ-like government to announce they are closing down the health system, because "it doesn't pay," and instead giving everyone a million dollars - every year. "Your cheque for a million will arrive in two weeks," would be their campaign slogan. The government would save about $0.6 million per person.

Imagine the uproar. The media would be red-faced, panting that a government's "sacred trust," it's "primordial duty," is to take care of it's citizens' health. But at two million dollars . . . per person . . . per year, that's four million per couple; six to eight million per family. What did it cost to keep your family in good shape last year?

Which point am I missing?

Do I under-estimate the contributions to society these things provide? Stephen Harper announced that the Montebello conference was inconclusive. Just as our health system needs a bureaucracy large enough to constitute its own country. Guys with briefcases do not come cheaply.

So why were we so upset about the sponsorship scandal? If we add all the costs of the Montebello summit, not just police, it would equal something like the sponsorship scandal's $100 million. The scandal payouts did result in pro-federal advertising; Montebello resulted in, well, nothing.

But the sponsorship scandal was all hush-hush, all under the table.

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Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/02.08