Canada Action Plan Ads are a Work of Fiction

The latest $6.5 million tax payer funded ads are quite a work of fiction.

Just enough 'truth' to make them believable. Like saying that Canada has the lowest debt and deficit of the G7. True in numbers, but when based on the percentage of our GDP, we actually have one of the highest. For instance, Britain, though they owe more money, their debt constitutes 42% of their GDP, while Canada's is almost 63%.

But the biggest fudge is on the employment situation. The jobs that are being created are not the same as the ones we lost.

According to Tavia Grant in the Globe:

...today’s employment landscape looks dramatically different than it did before the downturn: The number of jobless people rose by 800,000 between October, 2008, and October of last year. More people are involuntarily working part-time, and long-term unemployment has surged – to nearly a quarter of jobless people, from 15 per cent before the downturn.

That surge is particularly worrisome. Long-term joblessness “can impair an individual’s ability to find a job when the economy improves,” said the authors, Jason Gilmore and Sébastien LaRochelle-Côté. “It can also affect stress levels and psychological well-being, and household finances often deteriorate, especially for those who exhaust their employment insurance benefits.” Among the long-term unemployed, the number of people without a job for at least a year doubled during the two-year period.

Our actual unemployment rate is 10%.

The stimulus programs provide temporary construction jobs, that do little for women, and the projects they are creating do not provide long-term jobs. I mean how many new jobs will a $4 library to a private religious school create?

We also have to remember that the global economic crisis was not something that came from nowhere, beyond any one's imagination or control. It was engineered by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs. The same Wall Street and Goldman Sachs now camped out in Jim Flaherty's office.

It's time for a reality check.

This Stimulus Spending Scandal Should be Impeachable

I watched an account of the murder of Kathy Augustine, former Republican politician from Nevada, who was apparently murdered by her husband.

However, what I found interesting about the story was the fact that she had been impeached as state controller for violating the privileges of her office. Apparently Augustine used her staff and office photo-copier in her bid for re-election.

So how is this blatant tax-payer funded re-election campaign, called the Canada Action Plan, not an impeachable offense?

OK. I realize that Canada does not have impeachment laws, but maybe we should.

We could call the new law the Harper Law, in honour of the man who broke all the rules of common decency in the interest of self-promotion. Or maybe the Giorno Law, since he was the man who authorized it. An exact replay of his days with the corrupt Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

Or maybe even the Reform Party Law because back in the day when they were trying to promote principle, they wanted to legislate a recall law, where politicians could be impeached or recalled for abusing their office.

Boy has that party gone down the tubes since Harper took it over. Although I think they dug their grave when they teamed up with Harris himself back in the day.

I never liked Reform because of their narrow minded views, but I thought their hearts were in the right place when it came to some "values", especially anti-corruption. Now we get the corruption and the narrow minded views. Haven't we been blessed?

Hundreds of millions of dollars gone. Tax dollars in the middle of a recession. A recession that we were supposed to have weathered, only to find that when the winds stopped blowing, our house and safety nets had blown away with them.

It's a complete mess and we don't even have the Auditor General's report yet.

50 million dollars for signs and who knows how much for other re-election paraphernalia like bunting, pamphlets and plaques (?)

The contract - which requires recipient groups to submit photos of their Economic Action Plan signs - says eligible expenses for signage include maximum costs of $2,250 for a small sign and $4,250 for a large sign. Another $2,500 can be charged for a "permanent plaque." The club can expense rental fees on chairs, flagpoles, a public-address system and a stage, and can charge Ottawa for light refreshments and snacks (no booze), printing and mailing of invitations, and media kits.

All of this while the municipalities were forced to borrow money for the actual project, and many have still not been reimbursed.

And while they continue to blow their own (taxpayer funded) horn, some of the so-called infrastructure spending was nothing but a family and friends orgy.

World leaders look at what Canada’s doing and they “want to be Canadian,” Mr. Flaherty insisted. Really? It’s hard to imagine there’s much Canada envy over the millions Ottawa has thrown at local pet projects over the past two years, including Kitchener-Waterloo’s Oktoberfest ($700,000), an indoor skateboard park and climbing wall in Winnipeg ($3.2-million), a motorized orchestra pit at a concert hall in Rimouski, Que. ($153,000), or repairing a busted hockey rink in Iqaluit ($2.5-million).

No one begrudges Canadians’ right to knock back some Schnapps or play a little hockey. But to throw billions into a hodge-podge of boondoggles and call it world-beating economic policy is a bit of a stretch.

Or how about the $15-million for something called Prince Arthur’s Landing at Marina Park to "install a water main, fill in a small piece of Lake Superior with dirt and put a sewer in so private developers can cash in with a water park, hotel, and condos."

Sounds like Tony Clement's 50 million dollar boost to help an American owned hotel.

Or thousands for a circus school. Tony Clement is expected to be the first grad.

And millions of dollars for private religious schools. And when I say millions, I mean MILLIONS!!!! Libraries, indoor soccer fields.

The debate over a government grant to build an indoor soccer field at Collingwood's Pretty River Academy (PRA) has turned ugly. Dueling on-line petitions, protests and countless letters to the editor have laid bare the issue
of public money funding a private school and the apparent inability of Collingwood council to get its own recreation infrastructure projects approved. (Pretty River Debate Turns Ugly: Collingwood)

Nothing open to the public. You have to be "saved" first, but even then be willing to open your wallets.

Like Redeemer College, with strong links to both David Sweet and Harper's former deputy chief of staff Darrel Reid. They got three million dollars of "public" money despite the fact that are a "private" Bible school. Or how about the four million that went to build a library in another private religious school? How is this helping the rest of us?

As Barrie McKenna states:

Mr. Flaherty insists the government’s orgy of infrastructure spending “will leave a legacy for future generations.” Unfortunately, the legacy may be a swelling deficit that crowds out spending on the kind of infrastructure the country really needs.

Now how about that recall law?

I Can't Imagine Why Harper's Base is Condoning This

When the Reform Party was created more than two decades ago, it was out of a deemed necessity that there should be a party in Canada who would do things differently. They were frustrated with Brian Mulroney and his culture of entitlement.

And as Brian Mulroney held high court in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Café de Paris*, handing out contracts and positions to cronies, they cried foul. The deficit rose, the debts grew and their interests were ignored.

So they were going to create a party that would be fiscally responsible, principled and populist. Where their needs would come first. Where government expenses would be trimmed and cronyism made a thing of the past.

And what did they get for their loyalty?

A party that outspends any other. That takes patronage and cronyism to extremes, while ignoring the needs of the populace. That has taken government waste to unheard of levels and has become so corrupt that it's mind boggling.

The battle cry is no longer 'The West Wants In', but 'Canadians want in'. 'Taxpayers Want in'.

As we learn that the Canada Action Plan was nothing more than a giant ad campaign and never ending photo-ops, you need to ask yourself: "Is this what I voted for?"

Some small community groups say the Conservative government that demanded Economic Action Plan signs be installed at their project sites within a week of delivery is now months behind in reimbursement of project expenses. Adding insult to injury is a federal funding contract that promises to reimburse groups for signs, plaques, bunting and a ribbon-cutting ceremony with politicians - but won't pay interest on money borrowed to keep the stimulus projects underway.

The money went for signs first, community second, Canadians last. Our money.

The contract - which requires recipient groups to submit photos of their Economic Action Plan signs - says eligible expenses for signage include maximum costs of $2,250 for a small sign and $4,250 for a large sign. Another $2,500 can be charged for a "permanent plaque." The club can expense rental fees on chairs, flagpoles, a public-address system and a stage, and can charge Ottawa for light refreshments and snacks (no booze), printing and mailing of invitations, and media kits.

Is this principled? Signs, bunting and plaques? If this was the old Reform guys or even the Progressive Conservatives before Mulroney, there would have been howls of protest.

So where is the indignation? Where are the protests? How is this defensible?

And what about the orgy of spending for the G-20?

The enormous tax increases on average Canadians, while reducing taxes for the wealthy? This doesn't bother you? How is that possible?

Or bailing out the banks? Would you have voted for that?

Or the horrible treatment of our veterans?

I can't imagine any original Reform Party member condoning this. I already know that the majority of Progressive Conservatives do not.

Just once I would like to hear someone from your camp give an honest opinion. Because this is not a principled, fiscally responsible government and I doubt it what's you had in mind when you signed up.

Stephen Harper won't listen to us, but he might listen to you. Or are you afraid to ask?

*On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0

Harper's Self-Promotion Ads Break Records

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.

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.

Mike Harris all over again. But then we shouldn't be surprised given that Guy Giorno was behind both extravaganzas.

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

Stephen Harper and All Those Signs

Since we now know that the Canada Action Plan was nothing more than a very expensive ad campaign, courtesy of Guy Giorno, we shouldn't be surprised to learn that Stephen Harper tracked his signs, but could care less about how, or if, the stimulus was working.

In fact he even put plunking down signs above inspecting our food. We could be poisoned to death, but so long as our last memory was of some damn sign, we could die happy.

OTTAWA - Civil servants across Canada were ordered by the Harper government to document every single sign posted anywhere promoting the federal economic stimulus plan, The Canadian Press has learned. They've spent countless hours tracking every one of more than 8,500 signs posted since last summer, when the urgent, weekly exercise was ordered by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic support arm of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office. It continues to this day.

Eighteen departments and agencies are involved, including the country's over-stretched food inspection agency, fisheries and oceans officials, health, public safety and environment workers and Parks Canada employees. The signage database, at the request of PCO, includes the total number of projects that require an "Economic Action Plan" sign, the number of signs already installed, the number of signs remaining to be installed and the number of signs ordered. PCO also demanded to know the anticipated installation dates for uninstalled signs. The tracking exercise generated thousands of pages of documentation over a six-month period at a single Crown corporation, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation documents obtained under the access to information law.

He didn't even care where they were made. Just stuck 'em in the ground and demand that we genuflect every time we walk by one. For Ontarians, it was like Mike Harris redux. For all other Canadians, it was 1984.

So I decided in his honour to post my own little sign: