Your Tax Dollars At Work - Office Edition

The sign says "Bicycles attached to this post will be removed at owner's expense."

The running joke at the office is the biggest burden we have these days is the government's efforts to reduce burden. 

Just about every week I receive an e-mail from a Director in a ministry I normally have nothing to do with telling me I can look forward to a series of weekly two-hour meetings to discuss improving customer service or easing business' path through our regulatory requirements. 

When I get one of these e-mails, I or one of my team will attend the first meeting to persuade them to leave us alone. This should be but isn't always easy to do. 

It should be easy because the Ministry of Energy doesn't generate red tape. No one in the ministry directly serves the public or business, so there's nothing to streamline there. The ministry doesn't build anything so there's no opportunity to economize. 99.8% of the ministry's budget is the subsidies on people's hydro bills. You can see the government's dilemma there: they've save money and lose votes.

This week's effort to squeeze Energy's square peg into a round hole was the government's announcement of a new unsolicited proposal framework. It includes energy projects, which is preposterous because the Ministry doesn't approve energy projects. The Ontario Energy Board has that job.

I set up a call with the ministry in charge. Our conversation went this way:

"You could have talked to us, you know," we said.

"It's not our fault," they replied.

By the end of the call the other ministry was 99% persuaded that energy projects should not be included. 90% of my effort next week will be directed at making up that last 1%.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen