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Trump’s EPA, DOGE join forces to cut Biden era grants totaling $1.7 billion, looking for billions more

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

LaTricea Adams served on President Joe Biden’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council. At the same time, she applied for a grant on behalf of her nonprofit Young, Gifted & Green – and received $20 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon. The grant is about 10 times the annual revenue of the nonprofit…

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to cut wasteful grants and programs awarded under the previous presidential administration, saving U.S. taxpayers $1.7 billion.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced the latest cuts on March 10. He is working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk on a “line-by-line review of spending,” according to a news release.

While the cuts total $1.7 billion, there is a larger pot the group is seeking to claw back – $20 billion routed through Citibank on for the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” according to The Daily Wire.

The fund acted like a piggy bank for favored left-wing groups, with $2 billion going to “Power Forward Communities, a green group linked to Democrat Stacey Abrams,” The Daily Wire reported.

Zeldin has already identified nearly $60 million in ideological grants from the Biden administration for “environmental justice.”

“Additional monies were allocated for DEI training for staff, expanding environmental justice content through the America’s Children and the Environment Program, contractors to advance agency DEI initiatives, and more,” the EPA announced in February. “More savings have been accrued through the agency’s cancellation of outside contractors hired to plan office-wide retreats, and from other contracted work that could be insourced.”

Some of the “environmental justice” grants canceled recently by Zeldin went to well-connected Democrats, according to a Washington Free Beacon report.

For example, LaTricea Adams served on President Joe Biden’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council. At the same time, she applied for a grant on behalf of her nonprofit Young, Gifted & Green – and received $20 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon. The grant is about 10 times the annual revenue of the nonprofit.

The grant would “result in the establishment of the Mid-South Environmental Justice Center with a community advisory board,” according to Democrat Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen. “It will also help to implement a community engagement plan, coordinated workforce training in green jobs, and hands-on water- and air-quality testing,” a January news release from his office stated.

Democracy Green “is a small mother-daughter operation that has never conducted wetlands restoration or lead pipe removals,” according to the Free Beacon. But the group’s board president, La’Meshia Whittington, served on an EPA advisory committee.

The group pushed back against the accusations, calling the Free Beacon an “obscure publication” that published “outright fabrications.” “Our organization has successfully executed water infrastructure projects in North Carolina, including emergency water support and remediation efforts after natural disasters,” the group wrote to Zeldin. “We own the wetland in question- no funds from the CCG Grant are being used for land acquisition but rather this project will restore an already contaminated creek that runs adjacent to some communities benefiting from the pipe replacement.”

Zeldin’s actions are part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to remove onerous economic regulations pursued in the name of fighting “climate change.”

He has also focused on “unleashing American energy” to bring down the cost of electricity and manufacturing.

“It is thus in the national interest to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” he wrote in a day one executive order. “This will restore American prosperity — including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years.  It will also rebuild our Nation’s economic and military security, which will deliver peace through strength.”

To fulfill this promise, Zeldin announced a “deregulatory effort” to “bring down the cost of living,” according to Breitbart.

“We will bring down the cost of living. It’s going to be easier to heat your home, to purchase a vehicle, to operate a business,” Zeldin told the outlet over the weekend.

“I’ve been told that we’re going after the holy grail of the climate change religion, and I would just say this: that we can protect the environment and grow the economy. It’s not a binary choice,” he said. “We don’t have to just choose one. The Trump administration chooses both.”

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Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

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  From the Montreal Economic Institute

The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.

“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”

Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.

Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.

In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.

It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.

The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.

In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.

A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.

The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:

  1. What is the purpose of the regulation?
  2. Does it serve the public interest?
  3. What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
  4. What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
  5. Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
  6. Is there a net benefit?

According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.

“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”

The MEI Viewpoint is available here.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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Canada urgently needs a watchdog for government waste

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This article supplied by Troy Media.

Troy Media By Ian Madsen

From overstaffed departments to subsidy giveaways, Canadians are paying a high price for government excess

Canada’s federal spending is growing, deficits are mounting, and waste is going unchecked. As governments look for ways to control costs, some experts say Canada needs a dedicated agency to root out inefficiency—before it’s too late

Not all the Trump administration’s policies are dubious. One is very good, in theory at least: the Department of Government Efficiency. While that
term could be an oxymoron, like ‘political wisdom,’ if DOGE proves useful, a Canadian version might be, too.

DOGE aims to identify wasteful, duplicative, unnecessary or destructive government programs and replace outdated data systems. It also seeks to
lower overall costs and ensure mechanisms are in place to evaluate proposed programs for effectiveness and value for money. This can, and often does, involve eliminating departments and, eventually, thousands of jobs. Some new roles within DOGE may need to become permanent.

The goal in the U.S. is to reduce annual operating costs and ensure government spending grows more slowly than revenues. Washington’s spending has exploded in recent years. The U.S. federal deficit now exceeds six per cent of gross domestic product. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of servicing that debt is rising at an unsustainable rate.

Canada’s latest budget deficit of $61.9 billion in fiscal 2023-24 amounts to about two per cent of GDP—less alarming than our neighbour’s situation, but still significant. It adds to the federal debt of $1.236 trillion, about 41 per cent of our estimated $3 trillion GDP. Ottawa’s public accounts show expenses at 17.8 per cent of GDP, up from about 14 per cent just eight years ago. Interest on the growing debt accounted for 9.1 per cent of
revenues in the most recent fiscal year, up from five per cent just two years ago.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) consistently highlights dubious spending, outright waste and extravagant programs: “$30 billion in subsidies to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt. Federal corporate subsidies totalled $11.2 billion in 2022 alone. Shutting down the federal government’s seven regional development agencies would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion annually.”

The CTF also noted that Ottawa hired 108,000 additional staff over the past eight years, at an average annual cost of more than $125,000 each. Hiring based on population growth alone would have added just 35,500 staff, saving about $9 billion annually. The scale of waste is staggering. Canada Post, the CBC and Via Rail collectively lose more than $5 billion a year. For reference, $1 billion could buy Toyota RAV4s for over 25,600 families.

Ottawa also duplicates functions handled by provincial governments, often stepping into areas of constitutional provincial jurisdiction. Shifting federal programs in health, education, environment and welfare to the provinces could save many more billions annually. Poor infrastructure decisions have also cost Canadians dearly—most notably the $33.4 billion blown on what should have been a relatively simple expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Better project management and staffing could have prevented that disaster. Federal IT systems are another money pit, as shown by the $4-billion Phoenix payroll debacle. Then there’s the Green Slush Fund, which misallocated nearly $900 million.

Even more worrying, the rapidly expanding Old Age Supplement and Guaranteed Income Security programs are unfunded, unlike the Canada Pension Plan. Their combined cost is already roughly equal to the federal deficit and could soon become unmanageable.

Canada is sleepwalking toward financial ruin. A Canadian version of DOGE—Canada Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Team, or CAETT—is urgently needed. The Office of the Auditor General does an admirable job identifying waste and poor performance, but it’s not proactive and lacks enforcement powers. At present, there is no mechanism in place to evaluate or eliminate ineffective programs. CAETT could fill that gap and help secure a prosperous future for Canadians.

Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

The views, opinions, and positions expressed by our columnists and contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of our publication.

© Troy Media

Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.

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