Ottawa spends taxpayer dollars telling us what a great job it's doing when the reality is its policies are screwing things up

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According to Milton Friedman, one reason the free market gets such bad press is that it has no press agent. In contrast, government officials always stand ready to glorify the government’s work and take credit for any positive outcomes it seemingly creates. That’s certainly the case in Canada today: government consumes significant public resources glorifying itself, without any regard for taxpayers or actual policy outcomes.

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Blacklock’s Reporter gives a recent example: “The Department of Housing admits it faked a construction site as backdrop for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promise of ‘faster, smarter’ home construction. The department billed taxpayers $32,707 to have contractors install a temporary structure for television cameras: ‘The homes have since been disassembled.’”

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Got it? To make an announcement glorifying itself for building housing, the federal government paid $32,707 to divert contractors and resources away from building actual housing in order to build and then take down fake housing. Alas, as numerous analyses have already