It's a long list

How government spends out money.

And a very depressing and exhaustive one.  John Ivison penned an in-depth look into the mess that is Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and it makes for an ugly awakening.  Reading of one financial debacle here and another there doesn't have the same impact as when they are all lumped into one column.  Here are the top contenders:

• A Chinese state-owned company was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to install X-ray scanners at Canadian embassies around the world.  It was only rescinded when someone pointed out that we might not want the Chinese to know the precise skeletal structure of everyone who enters a Canadian embassy;
• Another $500 million was awarded to "stabilize" the Phoenix pay system that still has a growing backlog of cases.  That mess will never be over;
•  76 armoured Toyota Land Cruisers were ordered for embassies around the world, but only 33 were actually delivered.  Nonetheless, Toyota still pocketed 90 percent of the $20 million paid upfront, as per the brilliant negotiations by PSPC;
• $520,000 was given to a Nova Scotia company to store a "dead" Coast Guard ship -- the same company the government was suing for negligence over the same boat, which incurred damages of $14 million due to incorrect storage; and
• The delays and cost-overruns in the tendering for a new fleet of warships has seen costs skyrocket from an original purchase price of $26 billion to $84.5 billion, thanks to a 10-year deferment of the project.

Clearly, PSPC is a master at making the worst out of many bad jobs.  Who's running it?  A genius named Paul Thompson, the DM, whose only previous experience was in the Innovation, Science and Economic Development.  Mr. Thompson, (not) at your service:

Spender in Chief.

Anita Anand, previously the minister of the above-catastrophes, has now landed at Treasury Board, where her mandate is to find $15 billion in savings.  Trudeau has a cynical knack of moving ministers from where they made the messes to portfolios where they have to clean them up.

Sean Fraser could have warned her.  He was bounced from Immigration, where he let in tens of thousands of illegals, to Housing, where he has to find places to dump them.

Good luck to both of them!