The CBC reported¹ (14 October 2009) about Conservative logos appearing on federal (not party) stimulus cheques being presented at funding announcements. One striking example (images at the CBC link) was a large cheque handed out by Conservative MP Gerald Keddy in Nova Scotia. In other words, Canadian taxpayer money is used to produce publicity linking a federal program to the Conservative party (though the Conservative party cannot and should not claim 100% responsibility for the program). The other parties have called on the ethics commissioner to investigate.

That type of publicity stunt just continued as The Star² shed light (9 November 2009) on Conservatives making themselves very visible at public events to announce funding, while they kept their colleagues from the other parties in the dark. Again, it’s a federal program. The article says

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have been using taxpayer-funding announcements to boost the fortunes of unelected Conservative candidates, critics charge…

In Edmonton-Strathcona, the only Alberta riding the Conservatives do not hold, local Tory candidate Ryan Hastman has participated in at least five government announcements over the past few months, while the local NDP MP, Linda Duncan, says she has been excluded from all of them. Hastman boasts of his participation in pictures on his Facebook page. Duncan… says it becomes doubly irritating when a Conservative candidate claims credit for funds she helped to get for the community, as the duly elected MP.”

Finally, The Star³ reported (12 November 2009) about the greater than $3 million dollars Conservatives spent, in one month, of taxpayer money advertising the notion that the stimulus spending was creating jobs. One has to wonder how useful this advertising is in a deep recession, when the $3 M could be put to far more effective use, say boosting unemployment payments to the thousands or workers that lost their jobs, or else assisting fledgling industries. According to the article, Liberal MP, Martha Hall Findlay said

“…she could understand if the money was spent educating Canadians about H1N1 flu, ‘but patting yourself on the back and making big pronouncements is not part of what taxpayers’ money should be spent on.’”

The advertising gets further criticized as promoting the Conservative brand without informing citizens of how the plan supposedly might have created any jobs.

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.