Thursday, June 18, 2009

Civil service pushing back against Conservatives turning stimulus into pork?

An interesting post from Contrarian, who has a letter from someone who claims to be a senior civil servant with issues around the way the Harper Conservatives are doling-out stimulus funding:

An excerpt from the letter, for the rest visit the site:

Projects are selected based on the needs of the Conservative Member of Parliament in that riding as the first criteria. As a long time bureaucrat, I am used to dealing with politicians who revel in self-interest. Baird however, is the nastiest, most partisan creature to have ever run a large department. What is best for Canada isn’t even remotely of interest to him - what is best for his party and his own political ambitions drives his agenda entirely.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

7 comments:

Bailey said...

Not sure if you saw Parker Donham's earlier post on the on the where the paving is being done in Nova Scotia.

http://contrarian.ca/?p=956

Donham's been a long time commenter on NS/East Coast politics. I'm glad he has a blog up and running, it was good during the NS Election.

The Rat said...

Where was this "non-partisan" civil service when Shawinigan was drowning in the pork? Seriously, where were they?

I hated Liberal pork and I'll admit I am disturbed by these allegations, and not particularly surprised, either. Still, sheesh, non-partisan is a load of crap.

Skinny Dipper said...

I wonder if Angry Baird is going to say, "F*** Canada" like he told Toronto to f*** off. I think that is why Angry Baird didn't like the city of Toronto presenting one big streetcar infrastructure proposal: the Cons can't cherry pick selected proposals that suit their own interests to get elected.

wilson said...

from the link
''the following e-mail from someone who claims to be (and sounds very much like) a senior official inside Transport Canada:''

good gawd, that's like msm and their 'sources' 'insiders' etc....
could be anyone sending that,
a disgruntled janitor, a Dipper blogger, anyone.

BTW, stimulus is PORK.
every one of the 308 ridings will get some pork too,
if that is what the PREMIERS decide.

A Eliz. said...

In a recession, it should be fair for every one.

Jeff said...

rat, it does go both ways. You may recall civil servant Alan Cutler played a not insignificant role in blowing the whistle on sponsorship. He later of course ran for the Conservative Party in Ottawa-South.

The Rat said...

"rat, it does go both ways. You may recall civil servant Alan Cutler played a not insignificant role in blowing the whistle on sponsorship."

I'll give you that, but what Cutler couldn't stomach was criminal behaviour. This is different, it's legal, and it's quite unsavoury. As I said, when the Liberals were pork-barreling, not stealing money outright, where was the civil service?