Ottawa spends millions on 944K phone lines. Nearly a third are ‘dormant’ – National | 24CA News
In the 2023 federal funds, the Trudeau authorities vowed to search out financial savings of greater than $15-billion over 4 years.
It could wish to begin with the telephone invoice.
In 2022, the federal authorities spent extra $165-million for greater than 944,000 land and cellphone traces however, in accordance with knowledge quietly filed within the House of Commons days earlier than the funds, greater than 290,000 of these traces have been “dormant” — not used as soon as for 3 months or extra.
The knowledge was tabled on account of a written order paper query from Conservative MP Adam Chambers.
“People are working differently,” Chambers stated. “How many phone lines does the government pay for, firstly, and are there ones we’re paying for that nobody’s using? Turns out almost a third of the phone lines are dormant.”
One authorities company, the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence, spent about $50,000 in 2022 for 214 telephone traces and by no means used half of them. That included paying for 129 landlines, not certainly one of which was used for the final three months of 2022 or longer.
A spokesperson for the ombudsman’s workplace defined that, earlier than the pandemic, all of the landlines it was paying for have been energetic however through the pandemic its workers labored from residence. As a outcome, the traces within the workplace went silent.
Ombudsman spokesperson Sarah Dolan stated the workplace is now shifting completely to a hybrid work surroundings the place workers will use a mixture of cellphones or use an Internet-based phone software like Microsoft Teams. That transition, Dolan stated, is predicted to be full by the top of the summer time.
The Ombudsman’s workplace is exclusive in that it’s certainly one of a handful of presidency businesses that prepare for and report by itself telecommunications companies individually. The overwhelming majority of telephone traces utilized by the federal authorities are procured by Shared Services Canada, the federal company that’s basically the federal authorities’s info expertise division.
Shared Services Canada stated that, thus far this 12 months, it had “decommissioned” greater than 50,000 telephone traces and is working with different authorities departments to decommission the remaining or put them into use.
Chambers, who’s a member of the House of Commons finance committee, stated discovering and slicing wasteful authorities spending is especially necessary proper now.
“The former Bank of Canada governor said deficits last year are one of the reasons why interest rates haven’t had to go higher. So if we want to have interest rates come down, we have to stop the deficits and unnecessary wasteful spending,” Chambers stated.
Most of the telephone traces the federal government purchases come from Bell Canada.
The telephone invoice from Bell topped $125-million in 2022 or about 75 per cent of all the pieces the federal government paid for cellphones and land traces.
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