So how much is this costing us?

Given the recent funding cuts to the ecumenical social justice group KAIROS of all of $7 million over four years and how this was justified in the name of fiscal restraint, it behooves one to ask just how much of the taxpayer's money the Harper government has absolutely wasted. And I do mean wasted, so if anyone has the time and inclination, perhaps an accounting is in order.

Let's start with this latest prorogation. Playing fast and loose with numbers, if one simply uses the figures of 308 MPs * $100,000 salary * 1/6 year, one arrives at a wildly ballpark figure of around $5 million utterly wasted by that many MPs who will spend the next two months sitting on their hands. Naturally, this figure is not necessarily accurate, but it's a starting point. Add to that what was wasted in the previous prorogation and one realizes that one could have funded KAIROS quite comfortably over the next four years with that. But we're just getting started.

As most sane people know, when one prorogues Parliament (and at the risk of over-simplifying), all of the pending bills simply die and have to be restarted. Would anyone like to calculate how much time will have to be re-invested just to get back to where we were before? Surely that is not an insignificant amount. And, again, money simply wasted. But there's more.

Let's consider how much of the taxpayer's purse is going up in smoke due to the Harper government's intransigence in refusing to allow the return of Canadian citizens marooned overseas. Let's start with one Abousfian Abdelrazik. How much Parliamentary time was wasted debating this case, arguing it, litigating it? How much time that could have been spent doing more productive things was blown off due to the ridiculous racism of Stephen Harper and his cronies? Would anyone like to put a dollar value on that? And add to that what Abdelrazik might make in a massively-justified lawsuit, I'm guessing we're talking millions of dollars -- money that simply did not have to be spent. Toss in Suaad Hagi Mohamud and the total goes even higher.

I think you get the idea. For a government that prides itself on its economic smarts and fiscal conservatism, it would be hard to even imagine a more retarded approach to protecting the public purse. Would anyone like to do that accounting? I think it would be awesome to know just how much money these idiots have pissed away for absolutely no reason.

P.S. One is, of course, tempted to add in the cost of an unnecessary election (pro-rated, of course, based on how unnecessarily early it was). Seriously, is there someone who's willing to crunch the numbers? I think it would be depressingly funny to see the results.