Just like a scene out of the Sopranos

Canadians seldom are surprised by developments out of Ottawa, scandal seems to be as prominent at times as the Peace Tower and the as free flowing as the river that runs below the Parliament Buildings.

But the latest revelations from Ottawa, will only confirm that it’s a city out of touch with the folks that pay the bills for that paradise on the Ottawa River.

In what seems like a segment of the popular crime drama the Soprano’s, the public service has identified at least 24 cases of "unsatisfactory staffing actions”, better known as phantom jobs.

In Mob lore, they are workers that never show up to put in a days work, but pay cheques are issued for the work that is never done. Names without bodies, listed on the employment rolls but invisible to any timekeeper. In politics it seems that the principle is just as popular, if in a slightly less violent world.

The recent revelations stemmed from an investigation that began in 2006 when the Public Service Commission (PSC) looked into two cases of public servants who were on leave from appointed positions to work in minister's offices.

The commission found that the two positions existed only on paper, and launched a full review of the movements between government offices and the public service.

From that humble beginning has developed an active case file of 24 mystery workers, a collection of files that will now be turned over to the Public Service Commission's Investigations Branch.

On a day that the Liberals were making quick political hay out of today’s latest revelations over the Mulroney/Schreiber era, it turns out that these 24 cases of phantom workers all seem to have taken place on the Liberal watch after 1996.

With every new development (and a review of the old ones) on the political front, the ways of the elected representatives and the ways of the crime families sometimes seems to get blurrier and blurrier.