Did Stephen Harper Eat The Host?

The answer to this question, and millions of others just as dull, can be found by giving yourself over to the United Liberal church of Canada. For the low-low price of $40 you can even be served flapjacks by Michael Ignatieff in a checkered blue shirt with his head as bare as the day he was born. Other pertinent questions answered by the United Liberal church: did the Conservatives accidentally fund the gay pride parade? They sure did! Other Conservative scandals, such as aide Jasmine Macdonnell leaving documents and tapes lying around at media rooms, the term “tar baby” being used in proper context, and cutting off the federal funding for anti-Israeli organizations will all be passed around at the collection plate. Please give generously.

Minister Warren

h/t Chucker

Brad Trost Not Speaking For Majority It Seems

According to a CTV article, Conservative MP Brad Trost, who told the social conservative abortion site “Life Site News” that junior tourism minister Diane Ablonczy acted without the approval of the party when she awarded Pride Week $400,000, doesn’t speak for the party. Mr.Trost is quoted as saying that almost the entire Conservative caucus and the PMO were caught off guard when she awarded the money under the new tourism program. He then suggested that Ms.Ablonczy has been stripped of her position because of the move, something the government denies.

According to recent reports, Mr.Trost and four other MPs who criticized the grant were barely acknowledged by the party. Funding for tourism events is nothing new, say industry insiders, and the Conservatives have improved funding since they took power. Industry Canada was handed a $100-million program to fund tourism events as a part of our economic “stimulus”, which is why Pride Week got their windfall this year.

Monte Solberg weighed in on this issue from his own blog as well, saying that Diane Ablonczy had been treated “very unfairly”:

The truth is that, for better or worse, the Conservative Government has provided grants for this kind of thing in the past. It was the Liberals who initiated them but it was Conservative Ministers who attended and bragged about the government’s support for the Gay Games. That’s because half the conservative caucus has a libertarian bent and the other half comes from the more conservative side.

So you can either scrap all grants for all parades, or you can fund the thing like you always have and devote your efforts to fixing the three or four other things that really do make a difference, none of which involves parades, costumes and nudity.

My ideal is to let everyone raise their own money to hold their parades and the police can be there to make sure that most of the people, keep on most of their clothes most of the time. That’s never been a problem at the Rodeo Day parade in my town but then again it’s usually cold in Alberta at the beginning of June.

I’ll echo Mr.Solberg’s comments. Ms.Ablonczy does deserve better than to be insinuated as some kind of a rogue by Mr.Trost.

Having said that, I find it interesting that, once again, the media jumped all over this story as a sign that the party had finally reared it’s hidden social conservative side for all to see. And once again, as has been case over and over in every “controversy”, not only is it untrue, it’s even unbelievable. Mr.Trost indicated that Ms.Ablonczy had acted without the permission of the PMO or Tony Clement, but such a step outside of the chain of command is extremely unlikely. We know by now that Prime Minister Harper runs a tight ship, so if Pride Week received $400,000 from the government, you can be sure that the highest levels rubber stamped it.

As Mr.Solberg says, it would be nice if people raised their own money for their own parades. But that’s not the country we live in, not the government we have running it, and unfortunately for the left, not a topic of controversy they can flog.

And Suddenly Everything Is Just Peachy

Mr.Berlusconi showing Mr.Harper a little Italian culture Photo: Charles Dharapak

One day after learning that our government may be set to post $159.3 billion in consecutive budget deficits over the next five years, the International Monetary Fund is touting Canada as the best nation in the G8 poised to recover from the recession. Our economy is set to outperform almost every industrialized nation this year and next, with the IMF predicting a 2.3% contraction in 2009, less than most advanced economies, and a growth of 1.6% in 2010.

This has led financial analysts to say that Canada doesn’t need more stimulus dollars that were being advocated by Keynesian economists. Indeed, I have serious doubts we needed the stimulus dollars that have been earmarked already. The IMF report indicates that, globally, conditions are improving:

“Financial conditions have improved more than expected, owing mainly to public intervention, and recent data suggest that the rate of decline in economic activity is moderating,” the IMF said, adding, however, that the recovery would likely be sluggish.

The release of the IMF report coincided with the beginning of a meeting of G8 leaders in central Italy, with much of the focus expected to be on measures to put the global economy back on track. U.S. President Barack Obama and Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, were among those advocating more fiscal stimuli be injected in the global economy, on the concern that the US$2-trillion spent worldwide may not be enough to ignite domestic demand.

For his part, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is asking for restraint from G8 leaders, and said that governments should ensure announced stimulus dollars actually get spent. I find it odd that countries like Great Britain and the United States are concerned that the trillions of dollars they’ve ponied up in stimulus won’t be enough, particularly when any economic indicators of success would most assuredly be delayed.

“Staying the course is probably the prudent path right now,” said Craig Wright, chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada. “From the time you announce fiscal stimulus to the time you actually see it bearing fruit, there is a great lag involved. It is coming and it will be coming alongside of the lagged impact from the low interest-rate environment.”

Of course the trip to Italy wasn’t entirely without the obligatory tossing around of taxpayer dollars. The government ponied up $5 million to contribute to building a youth centre in L’Aquila, the host city for the G8 summit recovering from a recent Earthquake. Of course for the Conservatives, that’s a mere gratuity. On Monday they promised to spend $58 million on a Pavilion in Shanghai for Expo 2010.