Considering how polite Canadians supposedly are (at least in their own estimation), it's remarkable how much the nation's politics can resemble a blood sport. Members of opposing parties seem to harbour genuine hatred for each other, and they don't hesitate to spend taxpayers' money to gain electoral advantage.
There's a huge ongoing example of this in Ontario right now. Before the last Provincial election, the Liberal government realised it was at risk of losing a couple of key marginal seats. To woo back a few voters, the government announced that a couple of planned gas-fired power stations would be moved from the marginal ridings to other parts of the province.
It worked, inasmuch as the Liberals were able to cling onto power. Ever since the election, though, the bills have been coming in. Initially the government claimed that the cost of relocating the two plants would be "only" $45 million. Bad enough, you might think, for something so blatantly partisan. But it turns out that the real cost is much higher. Despite every effort by the government to forestall any propoer accounting, it now emerges that the actual cost for just one of the plants was $270 million. A full accounting for the other plant will appear in the next few weeks, and when all's said and done, it's likely that over half a billion taxpayer dollars was squandered purely for political advantage*.
You'd think that any party that did such a thing would be turfed out of office, ideally into the nearest jail cell, but you'd be wrong.. The Liberals are still in office, albeit with a new leader, and are still in with a fighting chance of winning the next election, which could very well take place later this year. Sad to relate, this kind of thing is all too common in Canada, and people just seem to accept that it's part of the game.
Government advertising provides another example, on a much smaller scale, but more insidiously. I've written here before that we were amazed, when we returned here from the UK, to see just how much TV advertising time is taken by the Federal and Provincial governments. They're outnumbered by the ambulance chasing lawyers and the gold buying pawnbrokers, but not by a wide margin.
Much the worst are the Federal government's "economic action plan" ads, which are nakedly partisan. It's surprising to see that the Harper government, which is unarguably the most right wing in the G8, and which is constantly preaching the need for spending restraint, thinks that telling the voters how much their government is doing for them is an appropriate use of scarce financial resources. No need for Canadians to ask what their country can do for them, because their country is falling over itself to tell them.
Now the Harper government is going further. At taxpayer expense, leaflets are to be distributed to Canadian households telling them what a lightweight the new federal Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, supposedly is. Viciously anti-Trudeau ads are already running on TV, though those appear to be paid for by the Tory party itself. PM Harper is dismissing criticism of the leaflet campaign with an insouciant shrug, arguing that all the parties do it, and it's quite within the rules. It probably is, and in Ottawa nobody from the opposition parties is likely to be pushing too hard for those rules to be changed. Because soon enough, they'll be looking to sling some taxpayer-financed mud too.
* UPDATE, April 30: The estimate for the second plant has just been released: $310 million, meaning that the total cost of this shameful episode is $580 million. Ontario is set to introduce an austerity budget on May 2 -- bet that money would have come in handy.
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