Of particular interest is the economic update that Harper put out. Remember Iggy's presser in an empty field?
Harper said 90 per cent of the stimulus funding has been pledged for more than 7,500 infrastructure and housing projects.Now as more than a few have noted, once the money is doled out of the fed's pocket, there's a limit to how much Stephen Harper can actually do. Is he supposed to show up at a construction site with a fleet of kidnapped Mexicans, hand them shovels, and get them to start digging at gunpoint? The cities for the most part have this money.
This is the third economic update since the Conservatives agreed to issue quarterly reports in exchange for Liberal support for the Jan. 27 budget.
Accountability was an absolute necessity for the Liberals to continue supporting the government and that has not happened, Ignatieff told reporters outside the House of Commons.
"Two weeks ago, they let slip out that they're going to boost payroll taxes. Today, they came out and said 90 per cent of their projects have been committed … and the reality we've found is only 12 per cent of their infrastructure money has actually got in to shovels in the ground," Ignatieff said.
Of course, if Harper had started digging right away, there would have been an outcry even without coloured slave labour. After all, you can't sneeze in this country anymore (thanks to the Liberals, incidently) without filing environmental impact reports, consultations, etc. etc. Well, all those safety engineering studies, environmental studies, stakeholder meetings, policy initiative consultations, etc. etc. all create jobs too. You'd think that the same Liberal party that gave us all of these "innovations" wouldn't be shocked to discover that they exist and that they do stuff.
The Conservatives basically made the same response: we're paying the "economy of tomorrow" people (ie. people who don't do physical labour) to do their part, then all the 9-4 schlubs with hardhats and Molson Canadian stickers in the back of their F-150s show up to do the rest.
Uh, Mikey, aren't you busy putting commercials onto the airwaves about how Liberals want to build the "green jobs of tomorrow"? I assume you don't just mean cleaning up toxic sludge but also environmental protection officers, environmental analysts, etc. etc. In that case, exactly the sort of people that get helped when 90% of the money is allotted but so far only 12% are employing guys with dirty 1993 pickups rather than new Priuses.
Was I expecting Ignatieff to make sense? Well, not really. Maybe a little. Sorry.
Update, 5:07pm: Whoops! Turns out Iggy was in the wrong field. And, as I suspected, it had just completed its environmental impact assessment.
