Who!!!  Us...?

There's a little bit of larceny and disreputable entitlement in all of us.  We seldom think that we are behaving in a criminal manner when we lift things from a place of work.  But those things that we take possession of are owned by someone.  And in the case of government, they are owned by the people who pay the taxes which enable government departments to embark on their purchasing sprees.  Buying up items required to enable public servants to perform their essential work.

And is it not beyond droll that those public servants who use the computers, the vehicles, the projectors, the BlackBerrys and laptops, are also taxpayers.  Having taken possession as employees of the state of these goods purchased by tax dollars they seem to have the impression that these goods are theirs, personally.  And if a laptop is useful at work, it is equally useful at home.  The casual interpretation of ownership and entitlement lends itself to the working environment.

And people who casually borrow blank notebooks for their children to scribble on at home or school because it's convenient, may just as easily convince themselves that the laptops and tablets are in plentiful abundance just like the pens and pencils, so why not take advantage of opportunities that present themselves to avail oneself of an extra one?  After all, they can also rationalize, they often do work from home as well as from the office, don't they?

And so it is that a search of inventories of government departments discloses quite substantial losses in equipment.  How does $455-million sound in the space of a year?  That's an awful lot of casual interpretation of ownership versus criminal activity.  Government is determined to do its research and to discover where those absconded items ended up, and to recover them. 

But those experienced with the problem have their doubts that more than $15-million in items taken of the greater total will ever be recovered.

Besides the loss of computers, for example, there is the troubling concept of vital data having gone astray.  Who has it, all those hard drives and smartphones, and what are they doing with it?  Some of the missing USB drives and hard drives include encrypted USB keys from the Auditor General's office.  The Department of National Defence, for its part, reported 56 stolen weapons with a value in excess of $42,000.

Weapons?  Why yes, and who has them, and what use are they being put to?  An additional three thousand military "weapons and accessories" to the value of $113,000 reported lost or damaged.  For a total of $888,000 of equipment purloined from the department in the last year, with another $3.3-million lost or damaged.  While on the one hand employees may feel entitled as users of the equipment and taxpayers at one and the same time, others feel no obligation to take care of materiels not their own.

And how's this for unbelievable?  Over 1,300 government vehicles, including ATVs and a boat were stolen, vandalized or damaged to the value of $2.8-million.  One Parks Canada "special vehicle" costing $97,000, 688 RCMP vehicles, 159 Canada Food Inspection Agency vehicles and 122 Fisheries and Oceans vehicles.  Gone.  Vanished.  Misappropriated. 

Or quite simply appropriated by those who work with them and feeling entitled to personal ownership.

These must be considered perquisites of the job; exposure to and availability of.