Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Eventually you have to say no to a bully

On March 5th the Liberals posted a Just the Facts release about Harpers Record on Infrastructure spending. The release explained how the conservatives still had $3.9 billion unspent from their current budget and addressed Harpers new demand for fast approval for an additional $3 billion while providing no information of where the money would be spent.

The Liberals made a reasonable request that Canadians should know what Haper’s minority government was planning to do with an additional $3 billion. See Martha Hall Findlays questioning of Baird.

With billions of infrastructure dollars about to be spent, the main point here was to stop Harper from treating our tax dollars as his private campaign funds and use our money in a responsible manner in the regions of Canada that need the assistance, not just the areas that will gain the conservatives favor or votes. I believed, at the time, that the Liberals owned the high ground here.

The only way to force Harper to start acting in a responsible manner, where he actually reports to the majority of Canadians through our elected representatives in parliament is to say no to his threats.

Unfortunately the Liberals failed to do that today and agreed to support the fund.

And I'm having a hard time justifying that, but I am sure someone on ProBlogs will explain it to me.


JAWL

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The only explanation I've read is that the quarterly reports will outline how the money has been spent after the fact. So Iggy blustered about accountability before the fact, and then backed down. I understand the stimulus money has to flow quickly to help Canadians and Iggy doesn't want to be seen as blocking this, but why did he make an empty threat about not writing a blank cheque? Doesn't make any sense.