At an event held by Rebel News in Calgary last weekend, Premier Danielle Smith spoke of an initiative called Tracking Receipts and Allocations for Canadian Expenditures (TRACE), which was inspired partially by Elon Musk’s DOGE south of the border. Smith explicitly noted that the tracker will scrutinize taxpayer money flowing to groups whose work or advocacy directly opposes provincial interests or political priorities. This includes heavily auditing environmental organizations opposing oil sands expansion and advocacy groups supporting supervised drug consumption services.It’s a good start. It’s always been ridiculous that tax dollars get funnelled toward organizations that use the funding to fight against the interests of taxpayers. By the same token, tax dollars shouldn’t go toward groups that support government initiatives either. Governments should get out of funding advocacy groups altogether.Start with the most basic problem, which is compelled support. Taxation is not a voluntary subscription. Citizens who disagree with an advocacy organization’s goals are still required to help pay for its staff, its reports, its media campaigns, and its lobbying. In a free society, the remedy for speech you dislike is more speech, not a claim on someone else’s paycheque. Once government money enters the picture, that remedy is diluted. The dissenting citizen is forced to underwrite the very message he wants to rebut.Tax-funded organizations are notoriously inefficient and inclined to corruption. Without donors or shareholders to answer to, these groups often become self-serving and exist almost solely to increase the grants from the government and expand compensation for the staff. Many groups call themselves non-profit in a fit of altruism, but gloss over some rather eye-popping salary and bonus packages for their top people. Getting government money out of the mix compels advocacy groups to streamline their spending and to justify their expenditures to supporters. Donors can stop writing cheques the moment they conclude the group has become ineffective, captured, or dishonest. Which is all too often, unfortunately..Some advocacy groups do some good work, but much of their advocacy is dedicated to securing more government grants. Being beholden to the government also leaves groups vulnerable to the political whims of the government of the day. The UCP is looking at tightening the purse strings for some ideological groups that heavily lean left. While conservatives will applaud this, they must also keep in mind that with a change in government, the same thing could happen to groups they like. Reducing dependence on the government can keep groups focused on their mandates.Smith didn’t call out any specific organizations which may lose funding due to the program. She said the government had been developing the tracking system for 18 months already. Had there already been some groups defunded, I suspect we would have heard about it pretty quickly.There will always be political reasons for grants and funding for advocacy groups. Governments dangle tax dollars in front of groups to buy peace during election periods or try to purchase support in regions where the vote is soft. Cutting spending on grants will always lead to vocal protests from organizations dependent on them, which is why cuts are rare. Governments would rather toss more money at the issue than deal with potential backlash, even if a group is working against government interests.The TRACE program may expose expenditures worth cutting, but the government will always look at cutting through a political lens. Perhaps the system should be transparent so citizens may log in and see where the tax dollars are going themselves. Let the public reaction to expenditures be more of the gauge of which grants should get the axe rather than electoral priorities. If citizens see for themselves how much of their money is going toward enabling addicts or fighting against their own industries, they will be more inclined to support the government in making cuts..Alberta’s spending has been out of control for decades. While Alberta ostensibly supports fiscally conservative governments, the governments have been anything but. Deficits are common and spending has proven to only climb. The dependence upon oil and gas revenues to balance the budget continues to get worse, and Alberta is only one peace agreement away from going back into the budget hole.It will take more than just cutting grants to advocacy groups to streamline the government’s books, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Let’s hope we see some cuts soon and see TRACE offered as a public tool to track spending. It is our money, after all. Not all advocacy groups will disappear without government funding. Those serving a true need will be funded by supporters and will learn to operate efficiently. The ones that can’t survive without tax backing never should have been in operation in the first place.
