You know what they say about icebergs - the part that you see poking out of the water is miniscule compared to what's beneath the surface. In recent weeks, a few icebergs have been spotted in Regina's Wascana Lake.

First, there was the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) report on government flight records revealing that many cabinet ministers seem to use government aircraft as personal minivans to ferry themselves back and forth to their riding.

And it's not cheap. In 2002-03, the most recent year provided by Saskatchewan Property Management, it cost more than $2 million to operate government aircraft - a $400,000 increase over the previous year. In that year, government pilots racked up $64,000 in overtime, and aircraft consumed $300,000 in fuel.

The government flight logs indicate that Saskatchewan politicians often fly back and forth to their ridings twice in the same day.

More recently it came to light that 35 bureaucrats took a taxpayer funded jaunt to Prince Albert and Saskatoon staying at nice hotels with golf courses - all on company time. Then there's the government advertising budget which increased by $2.5 million last year to $13.6 million, and Premier Calvert says that number is going nowhere but up.

To add insult to injury the CTF obtained the average number of sick days taken by government employees through Freedom of Information. The survey included most major crowns, government departments and ten of the province's twelve health authorities.

Of the twelve government departments surveyed eight have seen increases in absenteeism since 2000/01. Saskatchewan Environment saw an increase of 39 percent - going from an average 6.9 sick days per FTE to 9.6 last year. Culture, Youth and Recreation recorded a 37 per cent increase, while absenteeism at Highways and Transportation increased by 25 per cent. Justice was the only department that saw a significant net decrease in absenteeism (24 per cent).

Government-wide absenteeism increased by 10 per cent and cost taxpayers $18 million in 2004/05. The average government employee takes three more sick days than private sector workers in the banking industry.

Absenteeism at the Saskatoon Health Authority alone cost in excess of $20 million a year. Now that's a lot of nurses and MRI machines.

The purpose of this exercise wasn't necessarily to criticize the workers, rather, it was to draw attention to a serious problem and call for it to be addressed. The problem is not the employees but the system that provides incentives to miss more work than necessary. The point is this: If we reduced absenteeism in government departments by 20 per cent we could save taxpayers $3.6 million a year - and that doesn't include crowns or health authorities.

To address absenteeism we need the unions, the government and taxpayers at the table to identify ways to keep people healthy, happy and working.

All the government spending problems that have cropped up lately teach a valuable lesson: There are always ways to reduce expenditures. If there is a political will we can control spending, curb the culture of entitlement in the civil service, and stretch tax dollars much farther.

In a time where we're seeing rising energy prices and school taxes, we need every penny we can get. The kicker is that this is just the tip of the iceberg.