Conservatives gear up for impending election by promising more than ever
With an election call expected this weekend, the Conservative government embarked on a campaign of dozens of taxpayer-funded photo ops and press conferences to highlight hundreds of government projects, before the tap is turned off.
An analysis of these announcements shows Conservative MPs have announced — or in some cases re-announced — nearly $4 billion worth of government projects in communities across the country since Monday, with more rolling in as this paper went to print.
Those included everything from a $500-million ring road in Calgary to a $5,000 investment in an Ontario faucet company. There was also $1.2 million to turn Stompin’ Tom Connors’s old stomping grounds in Prince Edward Island into a tourist attraction, and $30 million to light up two Montreal bridges in 2017.
Asked Friday whether the Conservatives were using government resources to campaign before the election campaign actually starts, Conservative party spokesman Kory Teneycke said: “I’m sure there will always be criticism no matter what the government does in terms of announcements.”
Aaron Wudrick, head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said it isn’t necessarily wrong for a government to want to tell Canadians what it is doing with their money.
But he said it would be “silly” to claim there was a coincidence between the sudden flurry and the pending election call, at which point all such activity must stop. Wudrick suggested this was another unexpected symptom of Canada having a fixed-election date.
“Any government that ramps up its announcements and ad spending before an election shows that it is trying to gain partisan benefit heading into the campaign,” Wudrick said. “This blurs the lines between government work and partisanship.”
Most of the projects announced this past week will be funded with money that has already been set aside by the Conservative government. Those include $150 million in community-based projects ostensibly linked to Canada’s 150th birthday, but which critics have described as a Conservative slush fund.
Many of the announcements have resulted in positive media coverage for the Conservatives in local media.
The Pembroke Daily Observer, for example, published a photo of Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant announcing $7,979 for a local museum. Similar photos have appeared in other newspapers.
However, Conservative MP David Wilks admitted to making a “mistake” after the Revelstoke Mountaineer in B.C. uncovered a $32.6-million discrepancy in a $156.6-million funding announcement Wilks made on July 16. Some of the projects Wilks was announcing had started last year, and at least one was already finished.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to call the election this weekend, with Canadians going to the polls on Oct. 19. At nearly 80 days, it would be the longest federal campaign in recent history.
While many analysts say a long campaign would favour the Conservatives, who have more money to spend than the NDP or Liberals, Wudrick said many Canadians will likely have forgotten about the government announcements by the end of the election.