While the nation turned towards the Vancouver 2010 Games, the federal Conservative government was busily cranking out one press release after another announcing spending for this project or that project often in this riding or that riding. At Canwest News Service, we try to track these spending announcements as they're made. As a result, we can present this summary data for the month of February.
By our count, the combined output of federal government departments was 426 press releases that contained news of one spending commitment or another. The combined federal portion of all those spending commitments was $2.71 billion. That spending might happen in this year or over the next few years. The point, for us, is that a politician stood up to take some political credit, via a press release, for the allocation of some federal funds.
We then manually try to figure out if the bulk of that spending will occur in tne riding or several and, if it's in one riding, which party holds that riding. Sometimes, the spending is for a national program that will benefit a wide variety of ridings across the country. Sometimes, its spending that will benefit a regional group — all farmers in Saskatchewan, for example — and that, too, is noted in our database as benefitting multiple ridings. A small group of announcements will benefit several ridings but all those ridings belong to one party. For example: A spending program for Alberta cattle farmers will benefit, in our judgement, only Conservative ridings in Alberta. The lone non-Conservative seat, is held by NDP MP Linda Duncan in downtown Edmonton, a riding which, for this example, we judge to have no or very few cattle farmers.
So, with that preamble, here's the breakdown of those spending announcements by party:
- There were 163 announcements totalling $380.3 million in February where the spending will be solely in Conservative ridings.
- Ridings held by Liberals were the target of 83 spending announcements, totalling $75.5 million.
- NDP ridings will see $75 million in spending. That was spread out over 47 releases.
- The government made 29 releases containing $43.8 million in spending commitments in ridings held by the Bloc Quebecois.
- The balance — 104 releases with $2.1 billion — where national or regional programs that benefit several ridings or were impossible to rack to a specific riding.
Some other notes:
- The biggest single spending commitment was made by Transport Minister John Baird on Feb. 25. He announced that Ottawa would spend $1.5 billion over five years to improve Canada's air transportation security system.
- The smallest announcement by dollar value was made by Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott who, on Feb. 16, announced a federal grant of $3,000 so that repairs could be made to the arena in Marcelllin, SK.
Note: I 'tweet' each spending announcement as I find it and you can see each of those tweets by following @ottawaspends on Twitter or checking out the ottawaspends Twitter account via your Web browser. Be sure to read the details and syntax on the #ottawaspends project.