COLUMN: Think Again – Another absurd waste of tax dollars

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This article was published 22/09/2024 (214 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there’s one thing Justin Trudeau’s government knows how to do, it’s waste tax dollars. Whether it’s $60 million on the glitchy ArriveCan app, $61,000 on pricey hotel rooms during a two-day anti-poverty summit, or $3 million on a gun buyback program that hasn’t bought a single gun, wasting money is what this government does best.

Right now, my expectations of Trudeau are so low that it’s hard to imagine how things could get any worse.

And yet even I was surprised by a recent True North story titled, “Taxpayers paid $70K for study promoting ‘polyamory’ as healthy for kids.”

Polyamory refers to having romantic partners outside of your primary sexual relationship. This study, which was funded by a federal grant-giving body and published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, concluded that introducing children to their parents’ other romantic partners could be beneficial to their development.

Yes, you read that correctly. The federal government spent $70,662 on a study that claimed polyamory is good for kids.

According to the study, “children generally appreciate their parents’ romantic partners.” Now I don’t doubt that researchers heard children say some positive things about their parents’ other romantic partners. Children are often remarkably good at seeing the good in terrible situations.

Obviously, I don’t believe for a second that polyamory is good for children, and I doubt that many other Canadians do either. Common sense tells us that children benefit from the stability that comes from parents who are committed to each other for life. Stable two-parent homes, not a revolving door of ever-changing romantic partners, are what children need most.

Of course, if people want to live in polyamorous relationships, that is their business. It’s a free country and there’s nothing stopping couples from having sexual relationships with lots of different people. Parents can also decide for themselves whether it’s a good idea to introduce their young children to their other romantic partners. While I think it’s a bad idea, there’s nothing I can do to stop them from making dumb parenting decisions.

However, what I refuse to accept is the federal government giving my hard-earned tax dollars to the left-wing academics who promote this idiocy. It’s bad enough when irresponsible parents harm their kids by subjecting them to polyamorous relationships. We don’t need to fund studies that falsely claim these relationships are beneficial to children.

What makes this story even more absurd is that it cost more than $70,000 for researchers to interview a grand total of 18 children. This works out to nearly $4,000 per interview, which seems a little exorbitant, to put it mildly.

To further illustrate what taxpayers got for that $70,000, here’s another gem from the report: “Romantic partners were described by the children as contributing to their material comfort. For instance, Justin, age 5, mentioned liking his father’s romantic partner because she offered him flowers and gifts occasionally.”

In other words, polyamory is good for kids because they might get some material benefits in the process. This makes about as much sense as saying that it’s good for kids to bounce from home to home because they get to meet lots of new people in the process.

I’ve seen a lot of government waste over the years, and I know that my tax dollars fund a lot of useless studies. But I never thought that I’d be paying for a study into the so-called benefits of polyamory for kids.

It’s time to get rid of this government before things get even more absurd. I can only imagine what kind of crazy study will receive funding next time.

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.