Following on from this:
Ridings represented by Liberal and NDP MPs are getting more than their fair share of a $2-billion federal infrastructure fund, suggests a new analysis by Canwest News Service.
Canwest's analysis of 310 infrastructure projects receiving funds from the Knowledge Infrastructure Program follows separate analyses by other news organizations of other infrastructure programs published last week that showed ridings held by Conservative MPs were receiving a disproportionately higher share.
But the analysis of the Knowledge Infrastructure Program grants shows that, nationally, ridings held by NDP MPs are getting more than twice what they would have got if the money was distributed based strictly on the number of seats each party holds.
In Quebec, ridings held by Liberals are also getting more than twice their fair share of KIP funds, while Conservative ridings have, so far, received just 1% of the nearly $250-million the federal government has given to colleges and universities in that province.
One of my tweeps, Massimo Bergamini, suggests that if you just looked at money given to colleges, you might get different results. OK — it's a time-consuming process but I'll try to dig that out (in the meantime — any of you can do by looking at my raw data and doing it yourself). But in the meantime, consider this — here are the top 10 universities in the country. Together, they received about $543 million or one-quarter of the entire $2 billion KIP plan.
Three universities are in CPC ridings; three are in Liberal ridings; two are in NDP ridings, one is a BQ riding and 1 — the University of Toronto, received money for three campuses, in NDP, Liberal, and CPC territories. Based on that sample, I'm not so sure excluding universities would show a much different trend:
| University of Sherbrooke | 82,950,000 |
| University of Toronto | 75,500,000 |
| University of Calgary | 66,202,000 |
| University of Alberta | 62,122,000 |
| University of Waterloo | 50,000,000 |
| York University | 47,500,000 |
| McGill University | 47,161,397 |
| University of Windsor | 40,000,000 |
| Brock University | 38,000,390 |
| University of British Columbia | 33,950,000 |
Great work, David – and frustrating. You've entered a bit of a minefield by engaging academics in the time-honoured tradition of arguing with one's interpretation of raw data (or the even more time-honoured tradition of doing so without actually looking at the data).
Interesting to note the overlap between ten highest-funding universities and ten biggest universities by enrolment. Missing from top funding list are: UQAM (BQ), UOttawa (NDP), UdeM(Lib), Western (Lib), Concordia (Lib), Laval (BQ). In their places are Sherbrooke (BQ), Calgary (Cons), Waterloo (Cons), Windsor (NDP), Brock (Cons), McGill (Lib).
So if we assume that all universities have equivalent need for infrastructure, we'd expect a correlation between enrolment and funding, but instead we see several universities in Conservative ridings in place of ones in Liberal ridings.
Not sure it really means anything, mind you.
Great work, I have been following your story over the weekend, and I'm interested on the analysis of how many non-CPC ridings actually credited a nearby CPC member for the work, or had someone present for the announcement.
I base this on my knowledge of the funding for Brock University. The riding of the campus is Welland, represented by NDP member Malcolm Allen. However, it is near the boundary of another riding, and more staff/students live in the riding of CPC member Rick Dykstra. At the announcement of the new building, on-stage were only federal CPC members (and provincial Liberals). The NDP member for the riding was left in the audience. At the groundbreaking for the building, the same pattern was repeated, only Dykstra was present in the photo-op.
I have no doubt with Brock's strong reputation for community-based leadership and active lobbying of politicians that both Allen and Dykstra worked towards this initiative on behalf of Brock, but even within this NDP riding, it was only the CPC that received the immediate recognition.