Recall, if you will, the criteria for stimulus funding from the budget:
66% is federal money
33% would be provincial, but they only get the federal money after they pony up themselves

I could see there being some muted amount of overlap in provinces that are already fiscally in more dire straits than other provinces, that and I assumed provinces like BC, Alberta, Sask would have all all ponied up money right away. Mind you…. we all know what assuming does.

So federal stimulus money should only be spent in areas of Federal government control only……cant say I hear anyone proposing that one. I have enough doubts about stimulus as it stands, to resrtict it to areas of responsibility is ridiculous.

However, previous govenrments have spent without concern for privincial responsibility. In this case the federal governemnt would be picking th ebidders, choosing all the projects themselves etc. That is a recipie for disaster. You may be asking why you need stimulus in the first place…..I had that question at the time, but if you are goin to d it, this is probably the best way to do it in this country.

Way to get your facts wrong Wherry. Kennedy's analysis does not say "Liberal/opposition ridings got 38% less" it says Liberal ridings IN TORONTO got 38% less. Why doesn't he do a province-wide analysis?

Well actually interpreting some of the data tells a different kind of story. About 15 million dollars of the recreational infrastructure money went to First Nations communities. Considering that native Canadians can't tax themselves, transfers like this are necessary (they won't benefit from the gas tax money, I would imagine). This money incidentally, is largely concentrated in Conservative ridings, but is hardly the picture of graft Kennedy paints it to be. Aboriginals are unlikely to support the Conservative party and certainly can't be thought of as an in-group to a PM whose mentor wrote "First Nations, Second Thoughts".

So excluding aboriginals, the average per riding should be 1,650,943 (and there are going to be discrepancies – not every riding is going to request a skating rink). This means that the discrepancy between Toronto and the rest of the province is only 21%, excluding money for First Nations. It also means that many opposition-held cities were net winners.

This includes (I am only looking at the bigger ones) Liberal Guelph; Liberal Kingston; Ottawa (which has 3 opposition MP's); Liberal Markham (in a very big way), Richmond Hill, NDP Sudbury, and NDP Thunder Bay.

Thanks for brightening my day. Still laughing.

Those would be stupid words to put in someone's mouth.

And it doesn't answer: "If ridings represented by Conservatives are, by some provable metric, somehow more in need of stimulus funding, is it inappropriate to direct spending…"

'Because Liberals did it' seems to be the only answer here. But why do currently held Conservative ridings 'need' disproportionately more? That's avr's question. That's the question. Did Liberal installed hockey rinks decay more in a Conservative riding than in others?

I addressed that earlier. You would expect to find older arenas…ie those in greater need of upgrade, retrofit and maintenance, in rural ridings versus either newer suburbs OR wihin greater urban areas, which have significant private arenas in addition to those municipally run.

Where have I said because the Liberals did it, speaking of stupid words to put in someones mouth. I pointed out that the Liberals put all those "uneeded" (your words) rinks in small communites 40 years ago. That infrastructure is either maintained or it falls apart, you seemed to be arguing that they were uneeded and therefore not deserving of funds…..

You have a point you want to stick to, apparently that the money flowing is all being partisanly directed when that is clearly not the case, that doesnt mean there isnt any partisan animus to some of the money. But really, this hardly amounts to the smoking gun, especially when NDP ridings are getting greater than the average. Maybe there is something else goiing on, you might want to see if there are explainations beyond the partisan lens you have on it to explain things.

You arent going to trot that out are you. David Miller unable to read the instruction manual on the application.

Miller cost the city of Toronto months of time by trying to break the rules. It was about local projects.

There is a good reason Miller declined to run again, and this part of why.

As for the list of apporved projects, if it hasnt been released it should, on that I agree.

The latest EKOS poll would seem to indicate that some factor or combination factors is starting to erode conservative support. The last Ekos poll gave the conservatives leading 40.7% to 25.5 for the liberals. The new poll shows the conservatives still in the lead but now its 38.3 to 27.1. The gap has closed by 4% in less than two weeks and this probably does not yet reflect the damage done by the attack by General Hillier. In the end defeating Harper may just be a matter of waiting for him to do the job himself. The old saying that its not oppositions who defeat governments but rather governments who defeat themselves may be playing out before our eyes.

The conservative's free spending habits rewarding their friends with public funds may be costing them support. I cant see them changing their ways now so if the Liberals manage to pull together a plausible platform and mount credible attacks on Harper we are probably seeing the beginning of a trend. If as I expect the economic situation either worsens or fails to improve that will make his life even more difficult. I suspect that when Harper called last years election he actually blew any chance he will ever have at forming a majority.

I think there are a number of issues complicating a government response.

Firstly, by taking the Liberal claims seriously they raise the salience of the issue. That can be dangerous even if they are ultimately exonerated. For instance, consider Paul Martin's response to adscam. He held a very public inquiry, and held an election. Even though it seemed pretty clear Martin was innocent, it cost him.

Secondly, not all projects have been announced or fully costed just yet. It may be that, based on the data currently available, there is something going on. For instance if you look at RINC numbers with no interpretation whatsoever, it does look crooked.

Thirdly, I don't think the best response for the government is to turn to data. Rather it is to make the Liberals find explicit wrong-doing. The funding application process looks pretty straightforward and fair (not necessarily equitable to all regions, but fair). If there are a lot of projects that were approved that should have been rejected (or vice versa) then the Liberals would have a real case.

Fourthly, to some degree the government wants it both ways. Harper would like for people in Tory ridings to believe that the government is looking out for them. Gerard Kennedy's political assumption is that voters care primarily about fairness. If Harper believes anything, it is that voters care primarily about number 1 (when Harper ran on accountability in 2004, he lost; when he ran as a retail politician in 2006 he won – that is a lesson he has not forgotten). So as long as the accusations are not too egregious, Harper may benefit from these attacks.

Finally, if you will excuse the poker analogy – if you know your opponent is bluffing, do you call him, or do you keep on raising.

I agree with you. Unfortunately, once the idea of stimulus was born and the bill was passed, the fact that pork was on the way was a foregone conclusion. Now it's a question of where, not why. Save us all.

"At least the Liberals knew how to balance the budget while running their scams."

The Libs did not run the country while the economy went off a cliff, corporate taxes approached zero and income taxes dropped as well, while EI rolls swelled.

Comments like that, I don't know why I bother to respond. If you haven't noticed the global economic downturn, then you're living in a cave. Are you living in a cave?

I hate pork. But the NDP exist for pork, while the Libs perfected pork. What we have now is a pittance compared to what they would have delivered. Those two parties tried to bring the government down in order to deliver the most pork (and to preserve their own free handouts from taxpayers).

I believe they still have serious problems with corruption.