Canada's Action Plan

The Conservatives are spending 6.1 million dollars of our tax money on TV ads extolling the benefits of their “Action Plan”. This amount is in addition to the cost of the Action Plan signs themselves, a figure that they refuse to quantify. Whatever the amount spent it’s obvious that the financial crisis played well for them. Because of the fiscal prudence of previous governments and the conservative nature of our banking system, Canada faired relatively well through this period. And this government is quite happy to take the credit for the way things worked out, but then, that’s what governments do. The part of the story that most annoys me, (beyond the actual cost of the signs) is the effort that the Harper government, through the PCO (Privy Council Office), has put into the erection of signage for every Action Plan project. The PCO’s focus on this project has been nothing short of manic. An information request obtained by the Canadian Press yielded this response: "There are currently 18 departments / agencies reporting on signage.” The PCO has insisted on weekly updates on the erection of all Action Plan signs and at one point, CMHC field staff were required to phone every single First Nation band office with an outstanding project in an effort to determine whether signs had been erected, and if not, why not. In contrast to this level of attention, the government hasn’t bothered to track how many jobs have actually been created by the stimulus spending. Here are a couple of quotes that illustrate the ludicrous nature of this situation:

“"There's no evidence that they put anywhere near that kind of energy or interest into making sure that there were jobs (created) or that they get good value for these projects."

“According to PCO as of Aug. 27, 2010, there were 8,587 signs erected across Canada, up 339 from the 8,248 installed as of Aug. 16”.

The stimulus program was a necessity and governments around the world put their own version of it into place. However, few if any of those governments managed to get as much propaganda value out of their efforts as the cagey boys in the backroom of the PCO.

AH