Christian "Independent": Liberals LIE about project funding in the House

Friday, February 06, 2009

Liberals LIE about project funding in the House

Guess what? Gerard Kennedy, and the Liberal Party in general, should be called out for CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT, for their boldfaced lies in the House of Commons yesterday.

In Kennedy's statement regarding funding of projects, the Liberals accused the Conservatives saying that 77% of the projects funded under the Building Canada Fund went to Conservative held ridings. Well folks, that's a pure lie, and I can prove it, with their own press release on the issue.

From their own backgrounder document, under the section entited, "Projects in Conservative Ridings":

Safety Improvements on Highway 17, 2008/07/24 Not specified - (Kenora; Greg Rickford)

Downtown Conference Centre 2008/02/22 $4 million - (Fredericton; Keith Ashfield)

Saint John Harbour Cleanup + other 2007/12/07 $126.6 million
major projects - (Saint John; Rodney Weston)

Did you spot the lie? The clue is in the dates when the funding was announced.

Let's see, who were the MP's for those ridings on the dates funding was announced?

MP for Kenora, ON on 2008/07/24 - Liberal Roger Valley
MP for Saint John, NB on 2007/12/07 - Liberal Paul Zed
MP for Fredericton, NB on 2008/02/22 - Liberal Andy Scott

That changes the percentage somewhat, from 77% down to 66% right off the bat... from over three quarters to two thirds. Interestingly enough, for some reason the CBC didn't catch that when they reported the story yesterday. Humm... maybe we should report it to the Ombudsman? Looks like we have another CBC reporter acting as a Liberal shill, without actually, you know, investigating the Liberal claims before reporting them.

Then consider that some (I'm not exactly sure which, for the record) of the projects in BC are related to the Olympics? Or as John Baird indicated in his reply to the question, of which the jist was, "When spending money in BC, it's kinda hard NOT to spend it in CPC ridings, cause there's lots of them.". And then of course there's the Alberta projects, which kinda HAVE to go to Tory ridings, no? Basicly, this is much to do about nothing folks.

Then there's this one that takes the cake:

Multi-purpose at IPSCO Place 2007/09/20 $20 million
(Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre; Tom Lukiwski)

Just for the record, that's just one kilometre outside of Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's riding of Wascana. That's kinda splitting hairs, if you ask me, as Ralph's riding will likely get just as much benefit as the riding the IPSCO Place is actually in. Here's the question... would they be complaining if the riding border was one KM further west?

Liberals... caught lying, AGAIN, to Canadians while trying to score political points. Sometimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Labels: Humour, Liberals

20 Comments:

At Fri Feb 06, 01:31:00 p.m. EST, Archie said…

Why does this not surprise me, good catch CC
At Fri Feb 06, 01:48:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Good job !
At Fri Feb 06, 01:49:00 p.m. EST, Christian Conservative said…

The best part is that several Libloggers are "gloating" about this one, saying "Hey, Iggy and Kennedy really nailed Harper yesterday in QP!!!"

Looks like we get the last laugh, once again.
At Fri Feb 06, 02:48:00 p.m. EST, uranowski said…

66% is still overwhelming bias towards Conservative ridings (they have 46% of the seats in the house.) You can put lipstick on a pig but try as you want Conservatives CANNOT take the pork out of the barrel.
At Fri Feb 06, 03:39:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Your forgetting Uranowski that the big city money is coming from the provinces who got the money from the Feds....the majority of Fed money to city's are not ear marked for individual ridings but are lumped into provincial infrastucture money. And, considering that Toronto and Montreal were the only places the Libs actually were dominate I'm surprised the number isnt actually a higher percentage! Lipstick, Pig and Barrel...man those are getting old. When Liberals are in power Fed money is dished around pretty fairly, there was of course vote buying, but, hey, to the winners....Con's are not doing anything that hasnt been done before, your issue is its not your side that's doing the buying! When you win an election you get to make the big boy decisions.
billg
At Fri Feb 06, 03:48:00 p.m. EST, paulsstuff said…

Uranowski, you are aware that during the Liberal's time in office Chretien's riding got more than the entire province of Alberta in infrastructure grants, right? What color lipstick was that pig wearing? I'm not great at math, so can you tell me the percentages of one riding getting more than an entire province.

And you seemed to ignore the fact CC mentioned that quite a bit of infrastructure money was for the Vancouver Olympics. So are you saying Liberal's would not have given money for the Olympics because B.C. voted Conservative?

Or maybe go google how much money P.E.I. got per capita in grants compared to other provinces. Hey, how is Lawrence MaCauley doing clearing his name over those contracts to relatives.

Awaiting your response.
At Fri Feb 06, 03:55:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Hey genius, you forgot about Fabian Manning's old riding (Avalon), which was erroneously put down as Liberal held, at the time of the expenditure. It's okay, these errors are common when hacks get tunnel vision.

LOL.
At Fri Feb 06, 04:17:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

I am also pretty sure that the Conservatives hold over 60% of the ridings outside of Quebec if memory serves...to put things into perspective. Th chances of hitting something on that dart board are pretty good. Also, my riding, which is NDP held, received a large amount of MRIF funding over the past couple of years, mainly because of the hard work of the municipalities in partnership with the province in getting their ducks in a row and having all their planning done...shovel ready? Aye!
At Fri Feb 06, 06:37:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

C'mon you can't really be that fooled? The dates - vote buying duh. Harper knew he was calling an election and he spent his time on "taxpayer" dollars campaigning.

Lyn
At Fri Feb 06, 06:43:00 p.m. EST, Christian Conservative said…

Oh, but that's not what you guys are accusing us of, now is it Lyn?

Your party was trying to say we're spending money only in ridings where we have an MP... that's what Iggy himself said, implying that if voters didn't elect us in a riding, they weren't getting any money. I've proven that accusation to be patently false. Your comments don't change anything in that regard, your guys lied in Question Period... PERIOD.
At Fri Feb 06, 07:56:00 p.m. EST, Eric said…

Lyn:

So... if the CPC gives money to opposition-held ridings, then its vote buying.

But if the CPC gives money to its own ridings, then its pork barrelling.

Heads I win, tails you lose situation eh?

Moreover, as already pointed out if you're going to do highway improvements they're likely to be in Conservative ridings because the CPC holds practically every rural riding there is outside of Quebec!!
At Fri Feb 06, 08:07:00 p.m. EST, Ted Betts said…

I'm not quite sure what the point of this post is.

Are you saying that 78% of projects funded by the Conservatives are NOT currently in Conservative ridings? Seems that the statement is 100% factually true. So that is not a lie strictly speaking. A lie is like the Prime Minister standing up in Parliament and claiming - with a straight face no less - that the infrastructure money is being spread across the country equally or that he didn't offer financial consideration to Cadman in exchange for his vote.

Or are you trying to say that, while strictly speaking it isn't a lie, the "lie" is that it isn't pork but vote buying because 100% of the infrastructure money went into swing votes in order to influence the voters? Because that also seems to be true.

From what you said and scanning the list of affected ridings again, what seems clear is that the Conservatives have used our tax dollars - your and my hard earned money - to win votes in swing ridings instead of trying to help Canadians everywhere as the Prime Minister lied about in Parliament yesterday.

Pork or anti-democratic vote buying. I am not picky. I'll let you decide which.
At Fri Feb 06, 10:32:00 p.m. EST, paulsstuff said…

Ted, what the post shows is that money for infrastructure was granted to ridings to Liberal MP's who lost in the last election, meaning that the pecentage drops quite a bit when you actually be honest and say what was granted to Liberal ridings.

Care to explain Chretien's riding getting more than the entire province of Alberta?

And if I may borrow a few of your words, A lie is like the Prime Minister standing up in Parliament and claiming - with a straight face no less - that all rules were followed in the awarding of contracts in the sponsorship scandal?

Or stating he never contacted the head of the BDC in regards to Shawinigate for two years, and then admitting he lied when caught?

Or his replacement stating the CSL received about a tenth in government contracts and then admitting it was in the hundreds of millions?

Free fishing trips at the Irving lodge, flown there on a private jet for cabinet ministers? How's Lawrence McCauley doing clearing his name over those contracts given to relatives? Art Eggleton get that government money back from his ex-girlfriend? Allan Rock awarding a contract on aboriginal healthcare to an auto-restoration company restoring his vintage car?

Royal Lepage contract scandal. PM stated all rules were followed, then when caught with rigged tendering, retendered the contract and did the same thing all over again.
At Sat Feb 07, 05:07:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

I heard that's why Kennedy had to leave provincial politics... He kept making stuff up and they got sick of it.
At Sat Feb 07, 06:15:00 p.m. EST, Ted Betts said…

CC:

Canadians are interested in what the current Prime Minister of the country is doing or not doing, the corruption and incompetence of his government.

If you guys want to run the next campaign against Jean Chretien, even though he was PM two PMs ago, be my guest.

We're going to be talking about Harper's blatant attempt to rig politics by targetting swing votes with federal dollars and generally favouring Conservative ridings way out of proportion to the other public and the votes he received. And then he has the gall to lie in Parliament, again, about being fair to all Canadians everywhere across the country.

So whether you want to argue it was 80% or two thirds of projects that were targetted for Conservative favouratism or whether you want to argue it was Conservative pork or Conservative rigging of electoral politics, for that too, I will let you choose.

Either way, the truth is starting to come out about this guy who is so petty and partisan and willing to do whatever it takes to get and keep power that he makes Mulroney and Chretien look like non-partisans.
At Sat Feb 07, 07:37:00 p.m. EST, Top Can said…

Anon@11:47, you do raise a good point worth considering, but I don't think it's that relevant, since the government did earmark the funding to occur before any CPC MP was elected there. Of course one would assume that the money had to flow eventually, it just so happens that the residents there changed the MP before the money arrived.

I wouldn't therefore accuse Gerard Kennedy of outright lying when he made his accusation. He must have been thinking of the occurrence of the events at present time, when there were CPC MPs representing those ridings. I doubt that Kennedy would have expected the MPs in those areas to change.

But you know, most of this stuff is dug up by staff who spend hours doing research and some of the details get lost because politically they want to make their boss (in this case, Gerard) look good when he says it. They certainly wouldn't go pointing out the fine details you listed, CC, for obvious reasons.
At Sat Feb 07, 08:05:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Hey all you Liberal brain-washed supporters. Who is going to repay the $54 billion that the 'supreme court' stated has to be repaid by Dec 31/09, in which the Liberals illegally removed from the EI funds in order to falsly claim their posting of surpluses when in actual fact they were hiding a deficit of $27.4 billion. Are we taxpayers again going to have to pay for this Liberal outrage. It should't happen to a dog.
At Sat Feb 07, 09:10:00 p.m. EST, paulsstuff said…

Ted, you really need to get a life. CC posted about the infrastructure funding, pointing out that Kennedy played with the figures when he knew they were wrong. He did that in the HoC. Then you come along talking about Cadman. Sheesh.

The PM will have no problem campaigning in the next election on his record. Liberal's will have to campaign with the coalition albatross around their neck. Good luck with that.

And spare me your idiotic ignorant fluff about Conservative's targeting ethnic communities for votes. You know damn well it's done by ALL the parties, and it was the Liberal's who wrote the book on it. Go read some of Cherniak's old posts on what they did to get otes from the Jewish community.

And you still haven't explained why it was ok for Chretien's riding to receive more than the province of Alberta. Why mention Chretien? Well some guy named Kinsella who still fawns over him to this day is now a Liberal strategist part deux.

By the way, maybe you should change your name to the Amazing Kreskin, it seems you know of corruption that the RCMP is unable to find, and know what the settlement of the Cadman suit is, even though neither side will give details. Psychic you are!
At Mon Feb 09, 06:55:00 a.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Nice find, CC - it's interesting that there hasn't been more thorough fact-checking by the media, beyond the CBC.
At Mon Feb 09, 01:43:00 p.m. EST, Anonymous said…

Personally, I can find countless examples of both the Liberals and Conservatives telling lies during QP, while in government, and in opposition. If I cared about the NDP, I could probably find lies they spin as well. Every party stretches the truth, lies, doesn't disclose all the facts, etc., so they can try to get the best sound bite of the day.