Kinsella finds Canadian Action Plan signage announcing "installation of interior/exterior signage". So stimulus money is apparently being spent on erecting signs announcing the spending of stimulus money. How strange to be a Canadian, these days.
Showing posts with label Stimulous Spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stimulous Spending. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tory Stimulus Becomes Weirdly Self-Referential
Kinsella finds Canadian Action Plan signage announcing "installation of interior/exterior signage". So stimulus money is apparently being spent on erecting signs announcing the spending of stimulus money. How strange to be a Canadian, these days.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Iggy Not Catching On, Harper Not Taking Off
And I'm starting to think I'm stuck in the movie Groundhog Day:
An exclusive Leger Marketing poll for Sun Media reveals 36% of Canadians would vote for the Conservatives, down almost two percentage points from the last election. Only 30% would vote for the Liberals, but that represents a gain of 4% since the Liberals won 26% of the popular vote in the last election. The NDP is at 17% support, down 1%.
But of course there won't be an election since the Layton NDP will be propping up Mr. Harper's Tories.
...which is fine for now. The main point of withdrawing support was to pass off the hot potato that is the charge of maintaining this government in power to the NDP. Let them deal with it awhile. From the Liberals, I would hope, we get more stuff like Gerard Kennedy's analysis of patterns in the government's stimulus spending, which was almost universally praised by the MSM.
Substantive criticism, in other words...and hints of policy.
By the way, AA's (widely repeated) argument is bogus, in fact proves Iggy's larger point about the disconnect between stimulus spending and actual need: why would you fund a project that isn't supposed to happen until 7 years out to fight this recession?
An exclusive Leger Marketing poll for Sun Media reveals 36% of Canadians would vote for the Conservatives, down almost two percentage points from the last election. Only 30% would vote for the Liberals, but that represents a gain of 4% since the Liberals won 26% of the popular vote in the last election. The NDP is at 17% support, down 1%.
But of course there won't be an election since the Layton NDP will be propping up Mr. Harper's Tories.
...which is fine for now. The main point of withdrawing support was to pass off the hot potato that is the charge of maintaining this government in power to the NDP. Let them deal with it awhile. From the Liberals, I would hope, we get more stuff like Gerard Kennedy's analysis of patterns in the government's stimulus spending, which was almost universally praised by the MSM.
Substantive criticism, in other words...and hints of policy.
By the way, AA's (widely repeated) argument is bogus, in fact proves Iggy's larger point about the disconnect between stimulus spending and actual need: why would you fund a project that isn't supposed to happen until 7 years out to fight this recession?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Government Inaction?
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OTTAWA–Liberal research suggests only 12 per cent of the $4 billion set aside for immediate job-creating infrastructure projects has actually flowed so far – a far cry from the Harper government's claim that 80 per cent of its economic stimulus plan is being implemented.[...]
Liberals were able to directly contact people involved in 946 of those projects. Of those, he said they found construction has actually started on only 224 projects.
Extrapolating those results over the other projects they weren't able to contact, Kennedy said they concluded that only 12 per cent of the $4 billion fund has flowed.
As I wrote yesterday, there are all sorts of legitimate reasons that projects might be delayed. It takes time to spend money, after all. But of course lying about how much of the money has been spent is a different thing entirely.
And I don't understand the government's reasoning here:
The average Conservative riding got 13 times as much money as the average opposition riding in British Columbia, 2.7 times as much in Quebec. In Ontario, Conservative ridings got 11 per cent more than opposition ridings.
After all, in a minority government situation, this necessarily means that most of the money is going to under 50% of the ridings, and furthermore, going to ridings the Tories already have locked up.
The average Conservative riding got 13 times as much money as the average opposition riding in British Columbia, 2.7 times as much in Quebec. In Ontario, Conservative ridings got 11 per cent more than opposition ridings.
After all, in a minority government situation, this necessarily means that most of the money is going to under 50% of the ridings, and furthermore, going to ridings the Tories already have locked up.
Aren't you supposed to bribe the people who wouldn't otherwise vote for you?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Troubles With Stimulus Spending
The data in Adapx's new Federal Stimulus Survey Report is all from the U.S., but I would suspect the same issues apply North of the border. The respondents were in public and private utilities, construction, engineering, survey, public works, state and local governments.
Many teams are finding that building compelling cases for stimulus money requires a resource investment to accurately document and justify their needs for stimulus money.
At a time when teams need to invest in building compelling cases for stimulus money, many are struggling to even keep up with current workloads due to reductions in personnel or pressures to increases output with their existing staff and resources. 
The resource constraints and productivity pressure not only impact the ability of organizations to make their cases for stimulus money, but they also have an impact on organization’s ability to start fully spending the stimulus money once it’s granted. 82% of teams reported obstacles that would prevent them from immediately starting to spend stimulus money.
Many teams are finding that building compelling cases for stimulus money requires a resource investment to accurately document and justify their needs for stimulus money.
At a time when teams need to invest in building compelling cases for stimulus money, many are struggling to even keep up with current workloads due to reductions in personnel or pressures to increases output with their existing staff and resources. The resource constraints and productivity pressure not only impact the ability of organizations to make their cases for stimulus money, but they also have an impact on organization’s ability to start fully spending the stimulus money once it’s granted. 82% of teams reported obstacles that would prevent them from immediately starting to spend stimulus money.[...]
The results suggest that rather than giving an immediate jolt to the economy, stimulus spending will be delayed as most respondents don’t have the immediate resources to complete their proposed projects.
Hardly an argument against stimulus spending, but pretty clearly a good sum of the money intended to be spent during the actual recession will be spent during the recover. Not a bad thing if your recovery is slow and painful, as this one seems likely to be.
Hardly an argument against stimulus spending, but pretty clearly a good sum of the money intended to be spent during the actual recession will be spent during the recover. Not a bad thing if your recovery is slow and painful, as this one seems likely to be.
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