Around this time four years ago I was critical of then-Delta MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay for using our money to buy votes in the run up to that fall’s federal election after she made a string of funding announcements in the riding.
Well, it’s happening again in our fair constituency, but this time it’s Findlay’s successor, Liberal MP Carla Qualtrough, who has been busy doling out the cash.
In July, Qualtrough awarded $100,000 to Delta’s Canadian Mattress Recycling Inc., $1 million to Delta-based Marcon Metalfab and $50,000 to the Tour de Delta. A month earlier it was huge money for flood protection as well as a hint of even more for a new Fraser River crossing as long as the provincial government can get its act together.
I get that MPs, particularly cabinet ministers, hand out money for a variety of reasons throughout their terms in office, but when this practice ramps up on the eve of an election, it becomes unseemly and, as I stated four years ago, it’s hard not to look at it as an attempt to buy us with our own money.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were presented to voters as something different, a government that would act unlike its predecessors, and to be fair, there are certainly many examples of that happening, including Canada’s first-ever gender balanced cabinet.
However, there are instances where the governing Liberals are behaving a lot like administrations of the past, whether it be pre-election spending sprees or not keeping their word on significant campaign promises, including everything from not-so-modest budget deficits to abandoning electoral reform.
As I get older part of me becomes more jaded because I’ve seen government largesse and inaction play out time and time again, but I’m also building up a certain level of immunity to it because of its stupefying repetition. Is it disappointing? Most definitely. Is it surprising? Hardly.
Perhaps the most confounding part, at least when it comes to pre-election funding announcements, is they don’t often work, evidenced by Findlay’s defeat four years ago. Even so, politicians in power just can’t seem to help themselves as maybe, just maybe, if they dispense enough cash voters will see it in their hearts to give them another term.
