Tory ridings eating up recreation cash
Projects awarded disproportionately, analysis finds
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau and GLEN McGREGOR
The Ottawa Citizen
Funds from a federal stimulus program designed to put hockey rinks and other recreation projects in communities across the country appear to be have been awarded disproportionately to Conservative ridings, an investigation shows.
Tory ridings have landed 66 per cent of all projects so far announced under the Harper government's Recreation Infrastructure Canada program, also known as RinC. The Conservatives have only 46 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons, so Conservative ridings appear to have landed 41 per cent more projects than had they been distributed evenly.
The numbers suggest that opposition politicians are right to complain that the Tories are using politically desirable recreation facilities for partisan advantage.
The province of Ontario — where the Tories hold about 48 per cent of the seats — a full 62 per cent of federally-funded recreation projects went to Tory ridings, data obtained from the Economic Action Plan website shows.
22 comments:
Harper knows his hockey but is ensuring AGW makes us a boring 1-0, 0-0 diver whiner soccer nation (indoor kinda like hockey).
I'd guess the stimulus is meant to make up for degraded infrastructures underfunded by Mulroney tax-cuts and then subsequent Chretein budget balancing. So whoever got the most immigrants and Natives (high birth rates) since and is projected to in the future, should be over-represented. Natives are cities of Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and all communities North of Yellowhead. Immigrants are mainly cities/suburbs of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. By my math, this should be over-represented Liberal with the goal of ensuring T.O. doubles from 5 to 10 million in a sustainable way. CPC could go with a strategy of just funding the blue ridings above, but of course requires long-term planning beyond earnings reports of tar and bank finance statements.
BC pot tax and AB oil sands tax (SK/NFLD probably close), around pre-1987 era 30% rate, would fund all respective infrastructure and healthcare shortfalls in these respective regions. Enjoy your urban sprawl and diabetes, rich.
I think Stephen Maher is one of the better journalists and this article is very interesting.
Do you think the article comes to any conclusion that shows overtly partisan activity?
Could the decision of David Miller who refused to fill out the EAP funding properly have had any impact for the projects in Toronto not going towards recreational facilities?
I remember watching the revised joint Toronto announcements (weeks later) favour large projects like Union Station, and a great deal of road repair.
Do you think cooperation had any relation to the projects?
I image that this article is based on the data that the other stimulus money article by the same papers. In that first one, you just have to read until the bottom where it says:
"The federal website does not provide dollar figures for federal funding projects, only four ranges of funding -- under $100,000, $100,000-$1 million, $1 million-$5 million and over $5 million.
The actual funding numbers might tell a different story" . . .
So basically, we used data that we knew was incomplete, and that incomplete data says that the Cons are giving themselves a few more percent then their seat total says they should get.
So if the Con ridings got numerically more projects in the 1-5 mil category, there is no way whatsoever to know if the total cost of those projects are balanced.
I'm pretty sure that journalists doen't have to pass stats to graduate because this study wouldn't get a 'C' in grade 9.
If you don't have a solid story, make one up I guess. Admittedly,
"The actual funding numbers might tell a different story"
An editor let this through?
Check out http://contrarian.ca/2009/06/17/paving-the-way-for-tories/
Its obvious the Tories are putting more money into Tory ridings.
Penny
CanSense, my objection would be that the Cons get all lawyery (sorry Morton) weaselly when it comes to giving Ont $600M for public transit (again a great way to help our flagship city grow sustainably and avoid problems plaguing LA/Mexico-City), but rams through $10B record auto subsidy and breaks election rule without dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
My main objection to stimulus timelines probably would apply if Liberals and to USA's and every stimulus: very economically inefficient to force a timeline for projects. You do want to time it when jobs are scarce and materials cheap. But compressiing large projects into such a small window...during a recession is when it would be cheapest to build big projects. Take time to plan. The ports up north would probably be perfectly timed to begin now but these multibillion $ projects could never meet the deadline, especially since stimulus dollars are slow to flow. You get an artificial limit of maybe $500M per project and the bigger more important stuff, say a subway line or a port or Iggy's high-speed rail; these have to be built during average or bubble of biz cycle? Absurd.
Probably you should give added time for planning big projects, and give incremental penalties for delaying construction long enough to build outside trough of biz cycle. Instead of plans ready in 6 months (IDK this limit) and construction in two years, withdraw incremental funding. Only fund 75% if plans 3 months late or construction 3 years long, 50% if 4 months or 4 years....
this methodology results in overspending or underinvestment of most important infrastructures. Guess which city probably has the most of these? Strange the oil consumer companies got $10B with no forms to fill and no discussion to cut could've-conquered-Chindia Zenn a tiny sliver. Bad economics.
Phillip I don't agree with EAP, it was too big and too fast. That means mistakes and projects that are less than necessary.
I also think it is fairer for each city to fund their own projects.
I support using a large pool tax base for cleaning up the Great lakes but not a small lake that has beach front cottages.
Cities estimate it will cost $ 13 billion to upgrade the infrastructure to meet the new regulations for water. Yikes!
Tackling real pollution problems vs setting up another ponzi scheme to reward the "solar wind" Green technology global warming industries.
Are you interested in paying more for heating your home so we can have a windmill?
Sadly the low tech Geo-thermal Green option is being ignored.
We are leaders in renewable energy and Liberals are ignoring our hydro assets.
I know the cons gave 1 million to the private Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton. Is this how it was supposed to go?
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