Want An Old Spy Plane? Canada's Online Auction Has You Covered

Hey, do you want an aging Canadian naval vessel? Do you have $66,700? Well you're in luck. Because the Government of Canada will sell one to you on it official online auction.

In fact, just about any sort of aging piece of government technology (and other useless stuff), you can imagine can be found on GCSurplus. The auction pools from all the crap the government has either outgrown or seized from various tax cheats, gangsters, and other shady characters.

Currently, there's enough gear on the site to fetch you enough equipment for a pretty spendthrift little army.

Get yourself a couple of patrol boats, a few motorcycles, some skidoos, this seriously treaded ATV, a plane, an ex-police Crown Vic (the kind that look like boats on wheels), a bulldozer, and an old scooter.

There's even a bunch of old "decommissioned" government computers (hard drives removed, to protect from any scheming spies), on sale for nothing.

Or maybe you're into something a little more luxurious. Well you've got a week left to pull $1.7 million from the couch cushions and bid on a decade-old fixed-wing plane used by the RCMP, and an aircraft model capable of air surveillance.

With the federal government getting ever-more neurotic about balancing the budget in time for the 2015 election, selling off its assets in order to get there as soon as possible has become part of its fiscally responsible ambitions.

In the last few years, the Harper Government basically said it wanted to hold a fire sale, hawking properties and assets left and right. And that's what's happening on GC Surplus.

Not that it's all gone entirely smoothly. GC Surplus got started in 2009 under the auspices of the Harper government, and it didn't take long before they had to pull it offline because someone was apparently hacking credit card information from the site.

It's since gone back online, and there's been no shortage of stories about all the whacky stuff and bad deals that've gone up on the auction block.

The government has even been taken to court by one disgruntled shopper. He says that the government, "gave him false or misleading information and omitted relevant and material facts about the vehicle."

One truck for sale on the website, going for something like $4,200, had a few things wrong with it, which included: "Possible bent frame, oil pan and front crank seal leaking, muffler bent and leaking, battery box bent, front headlight, side mirror broken, several tires are flat, transmission output seal leaking, truck cab damaged and box sides bent, odometer reading is unknown, maintenance sticker is sun faded and unreadable."

But with such glowing reviews from reddit users describing it as a, "great place to shop if you're an aspiring hoarder," it's hard to avoid the deep wormhole that is GC Surplus.

GC Surplus even has a Twitter account. "Time to add to your fleet!" chirped the account, in advertising that $1.7 million plane.

"Camping season has finally arrived! Update your equipment and hit up the great wild this weekend," it tweeted in June, linking to a list that includes "various used tarpaulins" and an assortment of gym equipment.

For a good number of the auction lots, you're definitely left wondering how exactly the government came to be in possession of, say, a box containing one copy of a Rudyard Kipling book and eight copies of another titled "Acquainted with the Night."

For others, you wonder what sort of utter dysfunction in the public service led to the Department of Public Works and Government Services coming into possession of some 100 vintage razor kits dating back to 1953, each selling for anywhere between $200 and $900. Or say, the firetruck that just went for $17,761 in May—only 5804km on the odometer.

You also have to feel for those bureaucrats who have to babysit things like "christmas decorations" and then show them off to interested buyers who show up to inspect the goods.

In the end, GC Surplus has become the perfect metaphor for the lengths the Harper government will go to in balancing that federal budget. And like any Canadian in debt, its holding its own digital garage sale full of used goods.

Except in this case, instead of old lamps and scuffed up loafers, you can buy a decommissioned naval boat for relatively nothing.