Last week's provincial budget added another 66 bureaucrats to Alberta's hilarious "Ministry for Restructuring and Government Efficiency."

Efficient government is like dry water, or the cooling rays of the sun, or hot ice cubes: it's an impossible contradiction. Government is never efficient because empire-building bureaucrats have no incentive to make it efficient. If they did, they would kill their own jobs. In fact, the less efficient government is, the more bureaucrats are needed to run it, and the more job security they enjoy.

Since government gets money from taxpayers regardless of whether it performs poorly or performs well, there is no internal motivation to root out waste or to lower costs. Outside of government, people seek efficiency all the time, and are generally rewarded for doing so. In the private sector, finding ways to deliver better service or to reduce costs can result in raises, recognition, promotions, more profits, and other benefits. But inside government these incentives simply do not exist. There are no rewards for a government worker who discovers a way to save taxpayers money. Everyone keeps on earning the same pay cheque by not rocking the boat. Further, government unions will oppose any measures that might reduce their membership rolls.

The fault lies not with government workers, who are as sincere and well-meaning as anyone in the private sector. The fault lies with a bureaucratic system that offers no incentives or rewards to government employees for saving taxpayers money.

That's why adding another 66 bureaucrats to the Ministy or Restructuring and Government Efficiency is an absurd waste of tax dollars. If their average salary is $35,000 - and that's a very conservative estimate - it will cost Alberta taxpayers an extra $2.3 million per year. But that doesn't include the cost of offices, furniture, stationary, phones, computers, software, printers, and other office expenses. Nor does that $2.3 million include the cost of heating, cleaning, maintaining and guarding the offices and buildings in which these 66 bureaucrats will work.

Restructuring and Government Efficiency isn't the only growing ministry. Health is getting another 137 bureaucrats, swelling this ministry' number to 1,378. These 1,378 people aren't doctors or nurses or lab technicians, nor are they people who cook food or wash laundry for patients. The number of bureaucrats

working for aboriginal affairs is growing by 14% this year. The premier's office and Public Affairs Bureau are growing larger too, now employing 233 people and spending 44% more money than two years ago. The finance department now has 929 bureaucrats, which is 10% more than last year. The Alberta government now employs 26,811 people - an increase of 15% in just five years.

Government efficiency will never be achieved by hiring more bureaucrats, even if there are now 1,272 of them working for Alberta's Ministry of Restructuring and Government Efficiency. The best way to make government efficient is to put it on a diet, by passing taxpayer protection legislation and spending control legislation. Only when you reduce the amount of money which flows out of taxpayers' pockets and into government coffers - only then will politicians and bureaucrats choose priorities and reduce costs.

Unfortunately, last week's budget contained $44 of spending increases for every $1 of tax cuts. Obviously the Tories believe that "government efficiency" is a real possibility.