Tories Stimulate Their Own – Money for Conservatives
The minority Harper government’s Economic Action Plan reports show that the stimulus money flows more frequently to Conservative ridings than others. Although the Conservatives make a point that the stimulus spending isn’t targeted by riding and can go to projects that cross ridings, the data shows a strangely unbalanced distribution of cheques.
The Ottawa Citizen1 reported (21 October 2009) that
“A joint investigation by the Ottawa Citizen and Halifax Chronicle-Herald shows that 57 per cent of the projects with more than $1 million in federal funding nationwide went to Conservative ridings. The party holds only 46 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Blue ridings therefore received 23 per cent more $1-million-plus projects than if the projects were divided evenly among all ridings.
The difference between government and opposition ridings is particularly pronounced in Quebec, where Tory ridings received 22 per cent of large projects, although the party holds only 13 per cent of the ridings, which means they received 62 per cent more per riding than if the money was divided evenly.”
They used information as published by the action plan Web site. This report is not the only one to notice. Two non-partisan software engineers, Jim DeLaHunt2 and Kaitlin Duck Sherwood3 (26 October 2009) put together an analysis, map, and spreadsheet (openoffice format) that show the issue. According to their analysis
“We think the real story is that Quebec is getting disproportionately less of the funding and the projects: 47% fewer dollars, and 65% fewer projects, than their population would justify.”
It’s interesting that as a whole Quebec receives less but its Conservative ridings get significantly more than the others.
