Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Okay, seriously, why do we need to have a lockup again?

by kadyomalley on Friday, January 23, 2009 1:15pm - 25 Comments

Other than to provide stimulus to the cafeteria at the Government Conference Centre, that is.  Hot off the wire from CanWest:

Raitt said that she expects the budget will contain a new community adjustment fund worth $1 billion to help rural areas adapt to the changing economic climate.

This would build on an earlier fund, also worth $1 billion, that Ottawa established late in 2007 that smaller and rural communities across Canada could tap into for special training or economic development projects.

Raitt also said the budget would set aside more than $100 million to invest in the development of emerging technologies for the forest sector, including forest biomass utilization and the development of next-generation forest products.

The federal budget will also contain $50 million to promote the forest sector abroad. This had been one of the requests made by the Forest Products Association of Canada.

And that’s not all we’re about to hear in the way of budget pre-announcements, apparently. From the same story:

The combination of Thursday’s budget news from the PMO and Friday’s announcement from Raitt may be part of a public relations plan by the federal government to spread out some of the budget news before Tuesday.

Later Friday, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Human Resources Minister Diane Finley are all scheduled to make “important announcements” in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto respectively.

Assuming that the ministers listed above will be leaking providing advance notice of whatever spendy goodness the government has in store for their respective areas of responsibility, that would save a few big ticket items for the finance minister to unveil on Tuesday:  infrastructure, transport, defence, industry and environment.

That is, unless this is just the opening act, and we’ll be getting notice of similarly “important announcements” by John Baird, Peter MacKay, Tony Clement and Jim Prentice any minute now. We’ll keep you posted.



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  • Geiseric the Lame

    So you’re not suspected of being privy to information that might cause people jumping the market. I appreciate your concern but its for your own protection. Thanks for asking.

    • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

      If they’re putting everything out the weekend before the budget, I’m not sure how much risk of insider trading is left. (And yes, for the record, I had the exact same grumble when the Liberals would leak everything but the budget speech too.)

      • Geiseric the Lame

        The return hose for the steering on my van went shot last week. Not being privy to its private life there’s telling when it really started to leak.

        Now thank your minders for the donuts and get some rest. The running of the bull is only a few days away.

      • Andrew (not Potter or Coyne)

        There’s still trading on Monday, if the budget is read in the evening, which is traditional, no?

      • Shawn

        It’s true. She did. I used to hear her grumbles from my old desk at the back of the Press Gallery “Hot Room.” Kady has always been quite adept at blasting government…no matter the party. ;-)

        But seriously…if you’re going to leak ahead of the budget lockup, why bother locking up the media in the first place? If the Budget is really as important and secretive as folks say, perhaps the Government should not play politics with it and just follow their own advice?

        Sheesh.

        • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

          I just can’t stand being locked up without BlackBerry or internet or any contact with the outside world. It’s sheer torture for an infojunky.

          • Vates

            It’s a shame, since the human angle is an essential part (IMHO) of your enthralling liveblogs; and a media lockup sounds like a recipe for human angles.

            Could you make notes — a retrospective liveblog, as it were?

    • John D

      So it was wrong for Brison to tell anyone about what might be in the economic update. What happens if the Cons leak some info to one of their not-in-the-Senate-yet media buddies and before filing their story said reporter makes some wise ‘investment’ decisions?

  • William

    I don`t think there could be any way to make you folks happy—-the big complaint about Harper is that he was too much of a control guy, so now when he`s spreading the love around—-ministers are making announcements concerning infrastructure investments around the country, you`re still complaining.

    Could it be that you are trying to protect your turf ? After all, what good is live-blogging at the lock-up if the love-in happened last-week ?

    • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

      Oh, William – you’ve got it precisely wrong: I would *love* to see the traditional budget lockup abolished. Have you ever been in one of those things?

    • John D

      I don’t think there’s anything ‘they’ could do to make you UNhappy.

  • Andrew (not Potter or Coyne)

    And ministers are crawling out of the woodwork because Harper has popularity issues?

    Sounds like how they run campaigns. Great. Governance as a permanent election campaign.

    • Critical Reasoning

      All minority governments are in “permanent campaign” mode. It takes a majority before government can switch to the “benevolent dictatorship” mode.

      • Andrew (not Potter or Coyne)

        No, I disagree. Martin didn’t have campaign vignettes to release his budget, nor did he air radio aids outside of the campaign period or the run-up thereto. Did Pearson do anything like that? This is all to say, just because Harper’s minority operates this way does not mean it has always been so.

        • http://macleans.ca kc

          Interestingly P. Russell made the pt yesterday i think, that minority govts work best when people other than the leaders cooperate. [ pm-opp L ] Particuarly when the leaders don’t get along. This is what happened in the Pearson yrs when he and Dief collided, and in just about every minority we’ve had, except this one. Wonder why?

        • Critical Reasoning

          If Martin’s hands weren’t tied by Chretien’s party financing reforms, I’m sure Martin would have run lots of ads outside of the campaign period. The ads probably wouldn’t have focused on the budget, since the global economy was buoyant at the time. They would have focused on Harper’s imaginary hard-right social conservatism, and his secret desire to strip women of their right to choose, and all the other BS that turned Martin from a deficit-slaying hero to a dithering panderer. Or a pandering ditherer, if you prefer.

  • http://macleans.ca kc

    I could support William’s pt that SH can’t win for losing if i wasn’t such a nasty cynic, or if i trusted the veracity of this PM a little more. All these folks getting the good news out the door faster then SH can make a surplus turn into a white rabbit, leaves me wondering what the magician has concealed in his other hand?

  • jdarrah

    Bizarre that so much is being leaked. You’d think they are opening themselves up to prosecution, if memory serves correctly. On related topic, do you recall anything really newsworthy in the SFT the day before?

    • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

      I’ll admit that under most circumstances, I have trouble remembering a single line in a Speech from the Throne half an hour after delivery, but from what I dimly recall in years past, the overall theme tends to be telegraphed in advance, although there are usually a few surprises in the speech itself. We’ve been joking that next week’s SftT will probably go something along the lines of “Hey guys, remember what I said last month? Yeah, well — that. See y’all tomorrow for the budget!”

      • William

        Kady
        I just had a rather bizarre vision of you in a hot sweaty room and you were sitting between Duffy and Oliver trying to type with absolutely no elbow room,
        I`ll take that back about you wanting to be there.

        • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

          Really, it all comes down to this: THEY TAKE AWAY YOUR BERRY. For anyone with even a passing familiarity with ITQ, that should be enough to explain why we dread the experience.

      • David

        Every throne speech of the past thirty years, distilled:

        Infrastructure, openness, accountability, federal-provincial, aboriginal, amend the Copyright Act. Divine providence blah blah blah,

        Love,

        GG.

        • John D

          You forgot families – especially working families, who work hard. WHY DO YOU HATE WORKING FAMILIES David?

          • David

            Sorry, hard-working families.

  • Clarence Seunarine

    I think they are using this method because Flaherty and Giorno realise that this time they can’t read the budget at the Magna plant.

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