A good use of tax dollars?

Two items surfaced in the news recently that have caused me to question how our money is being spent. $10M on an inquiry and $84K on a road trip. The PC's in Alberta promised, if elected, to 
"Invest in Families and Communities: we will support wellness, families and communities as an investment in Albertans and Alberta’s future."

So the $10M is to investigate whether or not there is queue-jumping happening in our health care system. My amateur analysis is this: If we have sufficient capacity to to provide quality health care in a timely fashion to everyone, there is no need for queue jumping. $10M hires 20 health care professionals (doctors, nurses, etc) for one year. Or 10 for two years. Or a few lawyers for a few months. I see an immediate value to spending on staff and facilities, but I am hard pressed to see the value of another expensive report that will tell us something we already know. Maybe the government forgot that they promised "Making healthcare more efficient and reallocating as much money as possible to frontline services continues to be our highest priority."

And $84K to go to the Olympics(tm) in London? This must be part of Premier Redford's commitment "to a re-evaluation and bolstering of Alberta’s international strategy, better positioning Alberta business and pro-actively, promote Alberta’s energetic, global focus in everything from tourism and trade, to arts and culture, education, research, innovation, and investment."

I get that we need to sell our brand. I get that, but where and how will the ROI be realized or even measured?  I bet there is no metric in place to gauge the success of this "investment". Will it be in tourism? That may be hard to handle given the previous years' cuts to Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation and Alberta Culture and Community Spirit.  

Maybe it is just a chance to see sports. If that's the case, perhaps the Premier and her ministers could have spent $84K to come to the Alberta Summer Games and invested in Alberta.

I'm just saying.

We need our Education to be fully funded.

I'm pretty sure that several someones in the Provincial budgeting process could use some remedial math and problem-solving lessons.

Pop Quiz:
1) An Education department is responsible for funding the operations of school boards with approximately 553,000 students and 36,000 teachers in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. In 2012-2013, the number of students is expected to increase by 1.5% and the salaries for teachers are expected to increase 5.0%. If the actual cost in 2011-2012 was $5,884,134,000 how much should be budgeted for 2012-2013 in order to maintain the same student-teacher ratio? (Choose the best/closest answer.)
   A- $6,082,000,000
   B- $6,270,000,000
   C- Some number that we can claim is a 3.4% increase in spending
   D- None of the above

I claim the answer is B: 5,884,134,000 * 1.015 * 1.05 = $6,270,000,000 (approx.) If you answered A or C then you are a Departmental Minister or someone involved in creating the budget.  (Source: 2012 AB Budget - pg. 26)

Obviously education IS important. It helps us balance our budgets. It helps us solve problems.

Considering this is just one example of bad budgeting, I dread to think how badly forecast the entire budget is!

I'm just saying.