According to Google – Irony: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

Hiring a consultant to tell you how to cut back on the use of consultants seems a bit funny to me. Or should I say it is ironic?

Certainly the current Canadian federal government has a love affair with outsourcing jobs that you would expect to be handled by the civil service. If this keeps government costs down, that would be a good thing. But it doesn’t.

The federal civil service has grown by tens of thousands in recent years, from 342,000 in 2015 to 391,000 is 2021 and the number is expected to reach 409,000 sometime in the next five years. You would think more civil servants would mean a decline in the outsourcing of jobs to consultants. After all, the cost of the civil service has increased 50 per cent since the Liberals came to power. But, despite there being more civil servants, there has been no reduction in the use of consultants.

Last year the government spent $17 billion on consultants – a sixty per cent increase from the amount spent by the previous administration. So much for the election promise to cut back on consulting costs, but this government has broken so many promises that one has been easily forgotten.

But why can’t all those extra civil servants do the job? Why does so much have to be outsourced?

We’re about to find out. The government has hired a consultant to tell it how it can save money on the use of consultants.

The good news is that the report will only const $700,000, which admittedly is a drop in the $17 billion bucket. But did anyone think to ask if it is in the consultant’s best interest to come up with suggestions to eliminate their own job? Why wasn’t the task given to a civil servant?

Talk about feeling conflicted! It would appear the people making the decisions have no clue what they are doing. They are happy to see the fox guarding the henhouse.

Still, there are reasons to be thankful. It was only $700,000. That’s a steal compared to $150 million the government spent for a COVID-19 vaccine that couldn’t be approved because the vaccine manufacturer was owned by a tobacco company. The WHO doesn’t endorse tobacco companies

Then again, what’s $150 million among friends? Maybe it was a consultant that recommended $273 million be given for ventilators to a company owned by a former Liberal MP, ventilators that were not needed during the pandemic.

The consultant reviewing the use of consultants will probably suggest the government hire a consultant to suggest ways from preventing such disasters from happening again.

Am I the only one who finds these things strange?