In the 2023 federal budget, the Trudeau government vowed to find savings of more than $15-billion over four years. It may want to start with the phone bill.
In 2022, the federal government spent more $165-million for more than 944,000 land and cellphone lines but, according to data quietly filed in the House of Commons days before the budget, more than 290,000 of those lines were “dormant” — not used once for three months or more.
The data was tabled as a result of a written order paper question from Conservative MP Adam Chambers. “People are working differently,” Chambers said. “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 government agency, the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence, spent about $50,000 in 2022 for 214 phone lines and never used half of them.