…as the Conservative government desperately tries to buy votes (the opposition are no better, just not in power).  John Robson of the Ottawa Citizen, one of our brightest journalism lights (amongst other things, see below), is shocked, shocked at the practice:

One thing I cannot stop myself doing is noting all the press releases the federal government puts out touting the myriad ways it has spent public money trying to buy support. What a lack of monument to democracy. No reasoning, no eloquence, just cash changing hands.

It’s one thing to be obsessed with insider stuff. But as these releases pour into my inbox I wonder in horrified incredulity who on Earth the senders think wants to read them, even among political junkies. Can they even interest their authors?

I mean, what public or partisan interest is served by telling the Parliamentary Press Gallery about your government supporting two affordable housing developments in Burlington, giving over a million bucks to Pneus ABC Tires Inc. of Atholville, N.B., to create “up to 15 new jobs,” $15,763,384 to Francophone communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, $534,820 for “25 arts and heritage projects in Newfoundland and Labrador,” and “more than $48,000″ to visitor services at the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre in Bayfield, N.B.? And that was just Wednesday morning. By 8 minutes past noon they’d added $52,826 in EcoAction Community Funding for Regina and central Sask-atchewan, and before 1:30 Fraser Specialty Products Ltd., Beaulieu Plumbing and Mechanical Inc., and IPL Inc. of Edmundston, N.B., had bagged almost $2 million … and on it went.

…you need to know this is what the guardians of the public purse (governmental and opposition) consider important. It is where they put their time and energy and while they’re sending dozens of these every week they aren’t doing, or thinking about, anything else. And it is costing you plenty, as the Tories try to buy support from every conceivable constituency and the opposition parties hammer them for not doing so on nearly a lavish or shameless enough scale…

Mr Robson is also now Managing Editor of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy.

Another approach to governing:

Coalition cutting like crazy

Mark
Ottawa