Those who have claimed that the Canada Action Plan was nothing more than a massive advertising campaign for the Harper government, have been proven right, as the figures for the largest expenditure of public money for self-promotion have been released.130 million dollars.
Ottawa’s advertising budget ballooned to a record $130-million last year, according to previously unreleased figures that show a 64-per-cent increase in the government’s marketing bill in a time of unprecedented deficits.Mike Harris all over again. But then we shouldn't be surprised given that Guy Giorno was behind both extravaganzas.
The advertising budget for 2009-2010 is a large increase of $50.5-million over the previous year’s budget of $79.5-million. In addition, the latest tally is more than three times higher than the advertising budget of $41.3-million in 2005-2006, when the Harper government took office.
I think they counted on an election sooner and are now scrambling to justify this nonsense.
And the "we've run out of ideas" Reformers are dredging up the sponsorship scandal nonsense. But they can't blame that one on Michael Ignatieff. He was "just visiting", remember? Besides it was Brian Mulroney who hired all the people involved in the first place*, creating a culture of entitlement.
And how many jobs did this blitz create? That would be zero. In fact according to Stats Can on September 10, 2010: There are 373,000 more unemployed Canadians today than there were in the fall of 2008, an increase of 32.8%.
Maybe I should put up a sign.
Footnotes:
*See On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0
Just think how many Canadians' wages could have come out of that $130 million, how many mortgages, power bills and phone bills paid, how many children could have been fed and schooled... especially the latter. Out of the mouths of how many babes did Harper's self-promotion come?
ReplyDelete-- K