I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself”, well when it comes to government, I’m thinking “if you want something f’d up have government handle it!”

I know this going to come as a tremendous surprise to all you, but, up to a quarter of federal government employees are still experiencing problems with their pay because of the crappy Phoenix pay system, and wouldn’t you know it, it looks the government might be running out of time to collect on overpayments. According to a recent Epoch Times article.

A new report from Canada’s auditor general says 28 percent of civil servants in its sampling had errors in their pay, which at first may sound like a lot, but is down from an estimated 47 percent last year, by government standards that’s a home run folks! On the upside at least the auditor generals working away!

So, what exactly do these “errors in pay” mean? Not a lot, just a paltry $500 million plus in overpayments, made to more than 100,000 employees, some of these going back more than three years. Maybe they could “mandate” that these folks pay it back, huh?

The good news for taxpayers, that’s you and me, is that if the government doesn’t collect those overpayments soon, the auditor says, it may run out of time to use some recovery mechanisms because of legal limitations. In other words, taxpayers are SOL, oh, shit out of luck!

The Phoenix system, which should have been burnt to ashes, was launched in 2016 and was meant to consolidate dozens of antiquated pay systems and save the government millions each year.

So, by now you’re probably thinking the savings must just be pouring in, right? Given, when originally proposed and launched, government officials stated Phoenix would save Canadian taxpayers $70M per year and for a cost somewhere between $100M-$150M. Well, I’m not sure about the savings part just yet, but I can tell you that to date taxpayers have shelled out more than $2.1 billion.
Now I’m not much of a mathematician but by my calculations if the bleeding stops now and we don’t pour another dime into it, in 30 years we’ll break even!

On the bright side be thankful they didn’t try to save $100M per year!