Prime Minister's Office Implicated in Partisan Spending Scandal Dubbed Shovelgate

The charge is simple: federal spending is politicized. Canadians might be forgiven for yawning with apathetic boredom but instead we should be shouting.

You may recall Gord Landon, a former York area regional councillor who was until very recently a candidate for Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada. Mr. Landon was dumped for being honest about what his party is doing with public funds: playing political games by spending federal infrastructure dollars for the Conservative Party's partisan benefit.

"One of the things we have been trying to get for a long time is a medical testing centre for Canada. They won't give it to this riding because it's held by a Liberal." Conservative Candidate for Markham-Unionville Gordon Landon

Chronicle Herald columnist Stephen Maher sums up this tempest neatly with the observation 'you're not supposed to say that kind of thing right out loud. You're supposed to hint at it. You're supposed to say that it helps to have someone "at the table"'. Gerry Nicholls - arch-conservative and former buddy of Stephen Harper - exclaimed in the National Post that "Politics is no place for honesty".

I'm not in the habit of quoting press releases from the Liberal Party web site but bear with me on this one as this is very relevant to this story.

Liberal Infrastructure Critic Gerard Kennedy today revealed explosive findings of Conservative political favouritism in British Columbia, where the Harper government is funnelling 325 per cent more taxpayer dollars to Conservative ridings compared to non-Conservative ridings.

Courtesy of the Liberal Party, a PDF document summarizing the spending allocation by riding party affiliation is attached to this article for future reference.

The Prime Minister's Office has of course denied the allegations.

Yet in an interview published yesterday Gordon Landon reiterated the charges which led to him being pushed out of the candidacy.

At the end of the interview they asked me, if you had a choice, what would you do for the riding and I said the medical instrument testing centre... I was sort of the head man to get Conservatives to participate and when I went to a number of functions and met with ministers and I talked to a lot of, many of the bureaucrats in Ottawa and the main feedback I got was it would never happen as long as John McCallum was in the riding. And I answered the question, I made the mistake of saying Liberal instead of saying John McCallum. Former Conservative Candidate for Markham-Unionville Gordon Landon

Mr. Landon also confirms that he met with people from the Prime Minister's Office and was told he couldn't speak to the press without their permission. According to Landon the PMO would prevent him from responding in an honest manner to issues. "I couldn't work with the media the way they wanted to work with the media. I'm the type of person (who) likes to respond to issues honestly ... They want you to vet everything through Ottawa and that kind of stuff. I just can't work under that".

According to the summary document, as of September 26 2009 only one riding in Vancouver (population more than half a million) - the third largest city in Canada - was blessed with infrastructure dollars from Stephen Harper's Conservative government, a party which purports to represent all Canadians. Somehow Langley (population 93 thousand) pulled in more than two times the spending dollars than Vancouver managed to earn with its more than a half million residents.

Of course not all ridings that saw significant spending are Conservatives, but the partisan nature of the investments is there nonetheless. Esquimalt-Juan-de-Fuca (population 121 thousand), currently held by Liberal (and former Canadian Alliance/conservative) MP Keith Martin, is a big prize the Stephen Harper's Conservative Party would like to bag. Harper's slush fund allocated more than four times the spending given Vancouver to, presumably, try to nab Martin's riding for the blue crew. A similar story plays out in Skeena-Bulkley Valley (population 91 thousand) where NDP incumbent Nathan Cullen, a past target of the Conservatives, has seen his riding receive six times more funding than Vancouver.

Shovelgate.