Big budget. Well-paid staff. Travel. Board meetings. Expense accounts. Outside consultants. Brand-new offices, furniture, computers.

And nothing to do.

Back in the day, I recall a polemical article making the satirical point that the most effective school system would be one without students to muck everything up. No need for discipline, parent-teacher meetings, or reminding kids to put up their hands.

The Harper government has done us one better: a government agency with no discernible function. A Dickens-Kafka mash-up, if ever there was one.

I wonder if further digging would reveal certain…staff connections?

(Phil Charko excepted—I know him to be an honourable man. But what on earth is he doing in a place like that?)

CathiefromCanada asks another question: if there is no EI surplus for the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board to invest, what the heck happened to the stolen $57 billion that the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the government to keep back in 2008? Certainly the Liberals raided the cookie jar when they were running the show: but why do I have a Magritte-like image in my mind of a vast landscape dotted with gazebos?

[H/t CathiefromCanada]

UPDATE: Reader martin was kind enough to remind me of a prescient episode of Yes, Minister, “The Compassionate Society.” Here is the salient excerpt: