The Canadian Taxpayer Federation has released its list of 21st annual Teddy Awards winners for government waste.
And BC Director Kris Sims says unfortunately this year B.C. is cleaning house -- taking 2 categories, including Provincial.
That award goes to the BC Legislature's Clerk and Sergeant-at-arms over the spending scandal, now under investigation.
Sims says receipts show expenses for extravagant trips, and purchases -- including the now infamous wood splitter and trailer:
" And the most famous purchase during those spending sprees was the wood splitter that cost more than $3,000 and the wood splitter's sidekick, the $10,000 trailer to pull him around in."
And Sims says going through the receipts the taxpayer federation uncovered something else:
" We went through about 600 of those receipts and expense forms, and we noticed that one of those $700 things that was labelled as luggage, a suitcase, on a Hong Kong receipt, was actually a man's fancy black wrist watch. And it looks really similar to the wrist watch that's being worn by the clerk at the press conference where he was denying wrong doing."
The City of Vancouver's Parks Board took the Municipal prize for it's $50,000 email-a-tree project -- inviting local residents to send emails to trees and paid artists to send replies on the trees' behalf.
The Prime Minister's trip to Indian took the Federal Award, complete with costume changes and an East Indian cook flown to India to cook East Indian meals.
And in what the CTF calls "an unprecedented example of enduring waste" former governor general Adrienne Clarkson won a SECOND lifetime achievement award for billing taxpayers $1.1 million in expenses since leaving office in 2005. Sims says adding insult to injury -- we don't get to know what she spent the money on.
The Teddy, a golden pig-shaped award given annually by the CTF to government's worst waste offenders, is named for Ted Weatherill, a former federal appointee fired in 1999 for submitting dubious expense claims, including a $700 lunch for two.