Quite frankly I don't care if it's $1 billion wasted or $1 million wasted, waste is waste and will never be recovered.
Please don't take this as personal criticism but I am about to criticize your one particular statement as harshly as I can, because it comes across as stupid and innumerate, and reflective of a lot of what is wrong with debate over public spending.
(Followers of TO council budget debates, I imagine you get that this is pertinent to the "Rob Ford's Toronto" discussion.)
In the city I live in, $1 million is roughly $1 per capita. I
really, really don't care if that gets wasted every week or two by the city government.
$1 billion is $1000 per capita. If that gets wasted a few times a year, heads should roll.
It's not good that the English words for so many gruesomely out-of-scale numbers all end in "illion". Really the word "billion" should be replaced with "so-hugely-more-than-a-million-it-will-make-you-puke". As for "trillion", don't get me started ...
This is not to say that I think the federal Senate scandal should be dismissed because the per capita cost is effectively zero. That's a big deal, but it's all about integrity, transparency, and honesty, not money. If you want to worry about money, think about how much you want to spend on F-35 jets, or not.