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Yesterday, National Post columnist John Ivison and I interviewed Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Like most, but not all, news organizations in Ottawa both the Post and Canwest News Service have standing requests in with the PM's commmunications staff for interviews with the prime minister. Over the Christmas break, he did 'year-end' interviews with CTV and TVA but (so far as I know) no one else.

This week, the lucky numbers popped up for us, CBC, and La Presse.

So what to ask? Well, before you can get to that, you need to know how much time you're getting to interview him.

The amount of time we get to ask questions is always one of the biggest haggling points with PMO handlers. CTV for the last few years makes a big production deal out of the year-end PM interview and reserves a full half-hour on its programmming schedule to broadcast it. As a result, CTV — over the last few years anyhow — has generally gotten the biggest chunk of PM's time — 30-40 minutes.

This week, Peter Mansbridge, anchor of CBC's The National, got 18 minutes. That's a lot of material for television but, when Evan Solomon asked Mansbridge for a preview about his "wide-ranging" interview, Mansbridge joked: "I love how you call it wide-ranging. It's 15 minutes. How wide-ranging can it be?"

So what did we get? Well, I turned my tape recorder as I sat down next to the PM in his Langevin Block office and when I turned it off at the end of the interview, while standing in his office's anteroom, a total of 13 minutes and 39 seconds had elapsed on the digital counter.

That's not a lot of time — and John and I knew going in, we'd be lucky to get 15 minutes — but it is enough time if you're smart about your questions. So the question we and our editors had before the interview, then, was what questions to ask?

We are there, incidentally, as proxies for our readers, not as proxies for the opposition parties or for a particular interest group. That's important to remember because the goal for Canwest, at least, is to leave the interview with a story that the local editors of the Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and other Canwest papers would find interesting enough that they would make (valuable) space for in their papers. It's important to note that even though we are all part of the same company, the decisions about what goes in each paper is very much made by editors at each paper and they make those decisions based on their knowledge of their own local reader communit.

So before we sit down to hash out the questions we have two things in mind: We're not getting much time and we need something that local editors believe will strike a chord with their readers.

So, first, we had to think about any news events that had popped up that day. When Mansbridge did his, the news had just emerged that airports in Canada would be installing full-body scanners and he, quite appropriately, began his interview with that subject.

No such news-of-the-day item had cropped up as we sketched out our questions but we also felt that since we and other news organizations had extensively reported that day on the Mansbridge interview, we ought to, as John put it in his column this morning,"push on to ground less well tilled".

Had we done the interview in the same news cycle as Mansbrige, the issue of proroguing Parliament would almost certainly have been near the top of our list of things to ask. But we were coming a day later and Mansbridge had, it seemed to use, done a reasonably good job or probing Harper on that issue:

PETER MANSBRIDGE: Let’s move on to the other issue that has come up in the last week, and that was the decision to prorogue Parliament. You know that it’s received a lot of attention, a lot of discussion. When you made the call to the Governor General last week and she gave you the approval for that idea of proroguing, what did you say to her as the main argument for suspending…?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, first of all, as you know, a decision to prorogue when the government has the confidence of the House is a routine constitutional matter, and truth of the matter, Peter, is that sessions of Parliament since Confederation have been on average roughly a year. Look, the reason is quite simple: the government has I think notwithstanding a very difficult economy, we’ve had a reasonably successful year in Parliament in the past year, but it’s been an extraordinary year in which we were obviously trying to implement an extraordinary economic action plan, a series of stimulus measures to deal with the peculiar circumstances of 2009. We’re now looking at a very different year coming forward, a year that we’re much more optimistic about, and we want to take some time to recalibrate the government’s agenda, both on the economy and on some other matters. So we’re going to present Parliament with a series of proposals for legislation going forward when the House reconvenes.

MANSBRIDGE: But you’ve seen the reaction. I’m not just talking about the partisan reaction. There’ve been editorials, there’ve been commentaries by respected constitutional experts who say this is the kind of thing that is leading to the cynicism on the part of Canadian people about the political process, that the process is there for, you know, for parties and politicians, but not for the people. A session of Parliament could be suspended at a time when there were all kinds of things still on the books, some of which you said are extremely important to your government, and they’re off the books now.

HARPER: Well, let’s be clear. First of all, the government passed all of its important economic and financial legislation of the past session, so we did conclude all of that. We have, as you know, some important crime legislation. That legislation will continue to be difficult. It continued to be difficult through the past Parliament, both, in both Houses of Parliament, but particularly the Senate. As you know, we have some opportunity to fill some Senate vacancies and help deal with that problem. But as I say, Peter, there’s nothing particularly unusual about a session of Parliament being roughly a year in length. Governments do want to examine their agenda from time to time and refresh it, and I would simply invite the opposition parties to take the opportunity to advance their own ideas. The government is going to look comprehensively at its agenda for the new Throne Speech, and we’d certainly be delighted to hear any suggestions of a general or specific nature that they have.

MANSBRIDGE: But what do you say to those outside of the political process who look at what’s happened here, second time in a year, different circumstances in both cases, but the argument being made by many, I mean, you know, you can’t pick up a story on this issue without somebody referring to the Afghan detainee issue, saying that that’s really the reason that you and your government wanted to stop the investigative work of the committee.

HARPER: I think polls have been pretty clear, Peter, that that’s not on the top of the radar of most Canadians.

MANSBRIDGE: No, but that’s not…

HARPER: What’s on the radar, what’s on the radar is the economy, and as I say, the government is looking at a…first thing we’re going to do when we come back is have the second stage of our economic action plan, a budget, new financial measures; that’s our focus. We’re in a very different kind of economic year, and that’s what we’re adjusting to. I’m sure the opposition will…you know, they’ve been on that subject for three or four years now. I’m sure they’ll continue on it.

MANSBRIDGE: No, but is it not legitimate to wonder, you know, whether or not…just because it’s not on the radar of most Canadians, showing up in, you know, public and one assumes internal polling, that that means it’s not important?

HARPER: Well, obviously we have a big difference of opinion with the opposition as to whether that is an issue that warrants attention or not. But as I say, the decision to have a new session of Parliament after a year is not unusual. Last year circumstances were unusual. I think everybody concedes that. This year circumstances are frankly quite normal. As Prime Minister, I think my sessions of Parliament have been a year or slightly over a year, so this is fairly standard procedure. I mean, I don’t think it makes sense for a session of Parliament to go on and on without the government periodically re-examining its overall agenda.

MANSBRIDGE: Do you think the decision to prorogue should be left in the hands of the government of the day, or should it be a decision that perhaps Parliament should have a vote on?

HARPER: No, I think it’s ultimately should be in the hands of the government of the day because it’s ultimately about the government presenting its agenda to Parliament, and the government calibrating its own agenda. When Parliament prorogues, for example, private members’ legislation is not broken off. It continues. So the opposition’s work will continue as soon as we come back.

Every news bureau in Ottawa received this transcript and each generated at least one news story out of it, a news story that appeared in the papers on Wednesday, the same day we were doing the interview. My Canwest colleague Andrew Mayeda, in fact, played up the 'prorogue' section of the interview: Prorogue 'routine', Harper says: Government will "recalibrate agenda

Other organizations emphasized other issues Mansbridge brought up in the interview:

• Toronto Star: PM downplays detainee scandal: 
• Canadian Press: Harper not satisfied with economic recovery until jobless rate comes down
• Sun Media: Canada will face labour shortage: Harper
• Sun Media: PM rips U.S. security rules
• The Globe and Mail: Harper to revive Senate reform plan

So I, John, and our editors found ourselves wondering if we should bring up the prorogue issue at all in our 13 minutes, knowing that, if we did so, other important topics would have to be left out given the time constraints. Among our considerations:

• If we filed a story on Harper's views on proroguing, local editors responsible for deciding what goes in Thursday's papers would likely not be much interested because they had just put a story in the paper on Wednesday with Harper's views on proroguing. It may matter a great deal to those inside the bubble on Parliament Hill who asked the question but it doesn't to our readers. And that would have been the only new part to the file, the fact that we, rather than CBC, had asked the questions.
• Was there a serious angle that Mansbridge missed or didn't have time to pursue with regards to proroguing? We didn't think so. Mansbridge had asked five questions on the topic. That's plenty. In our meetings, I said that a smaller issue Peter might have pursued was that while some could take as reasonable the desire to 'recalibrate" the agenda or re-set Senate committeees by proroguging,  I had yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why the prorogation period had to last until March. Why not just prorogue on Jan. 25 and call Parliament back on Jan. 27, as planned, for the throne speech? Doing that would still have allowed for the reasonable objective of re-setting committees and recalibrating agendas without seriously interrupting Parliament's ongoing business. But while I'm still interested in getting some answers to that question, that seemed a question about tactics and was not the kind of forward-looking question that would generate a news story that would interest most readers.
• Was Harper likely to say something to us on proroguing that he didn't say to Mansbridge? In our judgement, no. Harper would have said much the same thing to us and probably used the same phrases. Indeed, when I asked him in our interview about the economy, he repeated much of the same material he did to Mansbridge. And in fact, he used phrases and lines I've heard him use for the past four months in speeches in Canada or abroad in China, India, South Korea, and Singapore. The PM, like most politicians, is prepared with talking points on a variety of issues and (perhaps unlike some politicians) the PM rarely strays from those well-considered phrases particularly when it comes to a contentious issue like proroguing.

So for all those reasons, we put the topic of prorogation off to the side, believing that we had already served our readers interested in this issue well be reporting on Harper's first comments on prorogation and we would continue to serve our readers well by getting Harper to speak about other issues we know are important to Canadians. So we chose Afghanistan, climate change, the senate, election speculation, the economy,  the budget/deficit, and a personal question (most good interviews, in my opinion, try to draw a subject out with at least one question they likely can't have prepared for and mine was a query about what kind of career he saw for himself after politics, in a decade, say) We knew that with seven topics we'd have to move quickly to touch on all of them in our allotted 10-12 minutes.

And, at the end of the day, we think we chose relatively well. Harper's comments on the Afghanistan mission seemed the most newsworthy to us and, indeed, the story focusing on those comments is the line or lead story todayon the front pages of the National Post, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the Windsor Star and is among three lead stories played by the Ottawa Citizen  . The story was 'teased' or mentioned on the front pages of the Montreal Gazette and the Regina Leader-Post.

More than 80,000 people dropped by this blog at least once last month — a thank you to each and every one for your attention — and viewed more than 210,000 pages. Here's a list of the posts that were viewed most often last month (with date of original posting):

Pretty frank assessment by a commander-in-chief of the system he says failed. Seems to me that kind of candour is refreshing …

“…once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253 — it's clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems and our aviation security took all appropriate actions. But what's also clear is this: When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable.

The reviews I've ordered will surely tell us more. But what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security. We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system, because our security is at stake and lives are at stake.”

Read the complete text of President Barack Obama's statement.

China Daily, the state-owned/government-controlled English language newspaper, has this interesting file:

The government yesterday vowed to make the work of foreign journalists easier, even as it urged them to obey Chinese laws while covering breaking news.

"We will stick to the opening-up policy and continue serving domestic and foreign journalists. This principle has never changed," the State Council Information Office Minister Wang Chen said at a press conference.

Wang cited some emergencies this year, such as the outbreak of H1N1 flu and the July 5 riots in Urumqi, as instances in which the government had given prompt information, held regular press conferences and organized reporters to cover the news onsite.

Wang, however, admitted that the authorities faced a challenge in balancing news reporting and maintaining law and order during major incidents.

"We still need to figure out how to facilitate reporters' work while enabling law enforcement departments to maintain order," he said.

Wang hoped that foreign journalists would abide by Chinese laws and temporary regulations imposed by the authorities while covering breaking news.

"Such measures are taken not only to resolve incidents effectively, but also to protect journalists."

China issued new rules on reporting by foreign correspondents, lifting several restrictions, in October last year.

Under the rules, foreign reporters are allowed to conduct interviews without applications to foreign affairs departments and resident reporters need not renew their press cards annually.

Tags: china, journalism

While Liu Xiaobo, China's most prominent dissident, was being tried and sentenced to 11 years in prison for criticizing the government last week, there was nary a word about his fate in any Chinese-language newspapers in China and only a few paragraphs in China's English-language papers. Perhaps the paucity of coverage was due to the fact that reporters, generally speaking, aren't exactly encouraged to cover trials — until – coincidentally? – Liu's trial. Here's an article from the Dec. 24 China Daily, the major state-owned English-language newspaper in China:

The media's lawful right to supervise trials in court should be guaranteed, but malicious or intentionally false reporting of a case will have legal consequences, the Supreme Court said yesterday.

The court suggested lower courts should be more receptive to criticism from the press. It also said the press should be more responsible and self-disciplined in reporting trials, in a document titled Regulations on People's Court's Acceptance of Supervision by the Press.

The document requires courts at various levels to provide assistance and support to journalists requests, and establish a method of communicate with the press.

The Supreme Court also drew a red line for the press, listing five situations in which journalists could be ethically criticized or even charged, including undermining national security, jeopardizing the authority of law and distorting facts.

Impartiality as well as objectiveness are the most essential qualities in reporting legal cases, the document said.

A recent trial of a famous lawyer who was accused of perjury in Chongqing's crackdown of gangs exemplified how a report can affect public opinions.

In a story published in China Youth Daily, lawyer Li Zhuang was described as an accomplice of a suspected mafia gang boss.

Li was immediately criticized by netizens.

However, people in the law field argued the depiction of Li as an accomplice showed either the reporter's absence of legal knowledge or deliberate defamation.

The court said it hopes that the new regulations could confine some journalists from distorting or fabricating facts.

The Supreme Court held a news conference yesterday to answer netizens' concerns, which suggests the country's court system has been endeavoring to enhance its openness and transparency.

Liu Xiaobo may have written the opening paragraph of Charter 08 which read:

the Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.

The old, gray, backward men who run China think thoughts like that are criminal and on Wednesday, Liu will go on trial for thinking such thoughts.

That's not right. Period.

A friend of mine from British Columbia was reading one of my pieces in today's papers:

Canadians may never give him the job, of course, but if they do one day pick Michael Ignatieff to be their prime minister, Ignatieff promises he won't live at 24 Sussex Drive until the 141-year-old building has a long overdue refit.

The famous address overlooking the Ottawa River is the prime minister's official residence. But its occupants, stretching back at least to Brian Mulroney, have been reluctant to give the place up in order to make repairs that have become increasingly costly and urgent.

Not Mr. Ignatieff.

"Zsuzsanna and I will check into the hotel," Mr. Ignatieff said in an exclusive year-end interview with Canwest News Service and Global National.

"It's a very good question. I think it is time for somebody to take one for the team, so we'll move into the Chateau or the Elgin [two downtown Ottawa hotels] for three or four years and let us get a residence for the prime minister that makes the country proud." [Read the rest of "Ignatieff would forgo PM’s official residence"]

After reading the piece, he sent me this clever note:

"Being from BC, I am able to offer to do those 24 Sussex Dr. renos for a casino licence."

Tags: 24 Sussex Drive, Michael Ignatieff, Glen Glark, scandals

I and Global National Ottawa Bureau Chief Jacques Bourbeau had a year-end interview Thursday with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff at his official residence at Stornaway. We have one story up already from that interview, Liberal government would focus on jobs, not deficit. Later this weekend, Global National will air other excerpts and I'll have additional stories out of that interview up at our Web sites. In the meantime, here is a transcript of the excerpt in which he talks about the fiscal policy priorities of a Liberal government. Jacques had asked if Canadians did, in fact, find much of a difference in the Liberal and Conservative approach to restoring the federal fiscal balance:

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF, Leader of the Official Opposition: Well there’s one place where there’s an emerging big difference and that’s payroll tax. You said in your question: They’re not going to raise taxes. Uh-uh. They are going to raise taxes. They’re going to raise payroll taxes big-time in 2011. And every employer, especially the small ones, we talk to say this is a job killer. So one of the big issues we’ve got is — yeah, we’ve got to get back into balance but is the smart way to do it to raise payroll taxes which will kill jobs. My vision of what’s going to happen in 2010 and 2011 is we’re going to have a lot of unemployment out there. We’re going to have a jobless recovery or we’re going to have a recovery where there’s still a lot of people looking for jobs. The worst thing you could do is make it more difficult for employers to take on labour. So one of the things where I think we’ve got to go as a party is say, ok, how do we create incentives for employers to hire people, especially young people. We’ve got 16 per cent unemployment for young Canadians.

People coming out of college and high school have got the highest unemployment rates in the country. Can we create some incentives for employers that say, you know, take on a worker and we won’t jack up your payroll tax. That’s the kind of thing that makes a difference.

They think the deficit’s the only issue you have to worry about and we’re saying unemployment’s the issue you have to worry about. That’s a differentiator. If I’m prime minister, I’m going to be looking at the unemployment numbers first and deficit second.

JACQUES BOURBEAU, Ottawa Bureau Chief, Global National: But regarding the deficit, if you’re saying payroll tax hikes aren’t the answer, then what is the answer? Because most experts are saying, in the next four or five years, we are going to have a significant structural deficit and Canadians at some point are going to look around and see who has a solution they think is viable. So what is it?

IGNATIEFF: Let’s remember where we are. We’re not in 1993. The debt-to-GDP ratio is significantly lower than it was in 1993. Why? Because of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. We’re in a different situation in 2010 and 2011 because Liberals managed the public finances of the country well. I think we can take a little longer to pay this deficit down. We should be very careful about payroll taxes which will make the unemployment situation worse. We need to focus infrastructure investment we’re making to create jobs, to focus on the unemployment issue and that begins to create some difference.

But look: We don’t know where we’re going to be in 2010-2011. We need to look at the books. Every Liberal who has been in government knows what the problem of the deficit is when you start paying interest charges, more and more interest charges, and you can’t invest in schools, you can’t invest in roads, you can’t invest in the things you want to do because you’re paying back the banks. But we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. So prudent fiscal management, good structural investment that creates jobs — and my sense is that that the tradeoff is: Do you focus on the unemployment problem or do you focus on the deficit problem? We focus on the unemployment problem and we think we can pay down the deficit on a different gradient.

But remember: I’m being asked to solve this problem – I mean, hello? Jim Flaherty dumped us in the middle of this. We gave them a $12 billion dollar surplus when we left office in 2006 and they jumped us into a close to $60-billion deficit. You ask them to fix it.

DAVID AKIN, National Affairs Correspondent, Canwest News Service: I find this interesting because we’re going to have this debate when the budget comes out. And the last Liberal government kept a $3 billion contingency fund —

IGNATIEFF: — and that’s gone.

AKIN: Exactly. And the Conservatives took over and said you need to use all that to pay down the debt. So, there again Liberals were saying the debt wasn’t a screaming problem, we can pay it down on a slower scale. The Conservatives wanted to accelerate that. Same thing now. The Conservatives are saying, we want to be quicker getting out of deficit at the cost perhaps of some other policy priorities. So when they present the budget with a time horizon to still get out of deficit in five years, can we still say that Liberals will demand other benchmarks have to be hit first before we start projecting — it could be 2015, 2016 —

IGNATIEFF: With respect, this is a moving target. Every time these guys give us numbers, they give you a different for when they’re out of deficit. They give you a different number. The thing is moving all the time. We can’t even have a serious discussion here. In 2009, they said we’d be out in 2013. In the middle of the summer, they said, well, it’s actually going to be 2015. Now they’re saying some other number. They don’t have a plan to get us out of deficit. So the burden is not on me — I’m in the opposition — they’ve got to give Canadians a credible plan on deficit reduction and they don’t have any.

Every time Jim Flaherty gets up, it’s a different story. So I’ll look at their budget this time and we’ll see what story they’re telling Canadians in 2010 whenever the budget comes.

AKIN: The reason I think this is important is because we go back to the political stability issue. You and your party are going to have to decide whether or not to support the next budget at some point. Now, the Tories are telegraphing that they announced this year’s budget essentially last year. But it sounds like there’s two things that will be important for you to address. As you mentioned — the payroll tax, as you called it and this idea of a fixed timeline (on deficit reduction). Is that roughly the area — aside from the actual details in the budget — those two big goals …

IGNATIEFF: Well those are issues but, you know, we’re dealing with the Conservative Party of Canada here. We’re dealing with Stephen Harper. The capacity for poison pills, for game-playing, for omnibus budget bills that freight in some other thing that you never even saw coming. I’ve been around long enough to know I’m not telling you what I’m going to do because I’ve got to look at this thing and see what it is. Every time there’s some kind of weird curveball you never anticipated. You talk about stability. I want stability as much as the next person but to have stability, you don’t play games with budgets. The last omnibus budget bill, it was like a dumpster. They had a whole bunch of stuff piled in there. So I’d like them to not offer us a dumpster next time. I’d like a nice little slim book that gives me a clear up and down choice and I’ve indicated some of the things I expect.

First time today that I'd ever heard of Steve Lonegan (left). (Thanks for that, by the way, to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show) Lonegan is the senior policy director for the U.S. conservative group Americans for Prosperity. Lonegan was once mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, and unsuccesfully tried to win the Republication nomination to run for governor of New Jersey. On Tuesday in Washington, he spoke at the “High Noon for Health Care” rally of conservatives who oppose the health care legislation now before the U.S. Senate.

One thing that struck me — even as a Canadian — was how homogenous the crowd was. It was all middle-aged white people, and this in a part of the U.S. that has, well, a whole lot of people who are not white. One of the posters held up by those at the rally had the slogan “Keep your hands off my health care” and someone had drawn a hand to accompany that slogan — and coloured it black.

That disturbed me a bit but not nearly as much as what Lonegan said to the rally:

“Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are out of touch with the American people. But they don't understand or choose not to understand that we are endowed with our creator with these rights and they're not going to take them away. Because we're going to kill the bill. Kill the bill. Kill the bill. My fellow Americans, we cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword. We've heard that over and over again.”

No, really, that's what he said. “We cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword.”

Watch it for yourself. Lonegan comes on at about 9:30 into this clip and makes his rather odd comment at 10:45 into the speech.

That's a deliberately, er, colourful headline to this post because, on Wednesday, at least, we saw the government commit to spend $26.6 million but only a fraction of that — $2.9 million — will be spent in a way that is specifically targetted at Conservative ridings.

This follows two days of announcements — chronicled here — where Conservative-held ridings overwhelmingly were the beneficiaries (and those held by one Maxime Bernier were particularly lucky!) of government investment.

Wednesday, this week, was a big week for FedNor – the Northern Ontario Federal Economic Development Agency — that is part of Industry Canada (Tony Clement, prop.). FedNor rolled out a pile of press releases yesterday with more than $9 million in new federal investment spread out among its major regions. Thunder Bay, the largest city in the north, got the lion's share of that money and, notably, the two Thunder Bay ridings are held by the NDP. The extremely cynical will note that it serves the Conservatives to help boost an NDP MP's profile with funding in a riding that is likely to send back either an NDP or a Liberal but highly unlikely to ever elect a Conservative. Olivia Chow in the downtown Toronto of Trinity-Spadina is often held up as a good example of the kind of riding where the Conservatives are happy to throw Chow some bones from time to time because they know the alternative for voters there is not a Conservative candidate but a Liberal one. Almost the same deal in Thunder Bay where voters, until 2008, had been pretty much electing Liberals for the last decade or two.

In any event, here's the summary scorecard for Wednesday, Dec. 16. What I'm counting is the number of press releases issued by any government department and then adding up how much federal funding is being committed in each press release. I then make a determination as to where that federal funding will be spent and put it in a political party's column. In some cases, the spending of the money will directly benefit voters in multiple ridings. Yesterday, for example, Conservative MP Rick Dystra announced $1.5 million will go to the Grape Growers of Ontario, funding that will benefit grape growers in several different regions of the province and, hence, several different ridings. For those projects, I assign an 'M' for multiple ridings and tabulate those results as well. Here's the results:

12/16/09	BQ	Announcements	1
		Sum of Funding_Total	1,493,152
	CPC	Announcements	9
		Sum of Funding_Total	2,943,624
	LPC	Announcements	2
		Sum of Funding_Total	12,873,167
	M	Announcements	2
		Sum of Funding_Total	1,771,000
	NDP	Announcements	6
		Sum of Funding_Total	7,509,323
Total Number of Press Releases			20
Total Federal Funding Commitment			$26,590,266