Conservatives Rein in Partisan Spending: Sixth Estate Pork Barrel Updated
I’m happy to report some good news in my latest update to the Sixth Estate Pork Barrel, which tracks government spending by riding across the country using the quarterly Proactive Disclosure reports theoretically issued by every Department (some departments haven’t bothered to meet the schedule this fall).
Since the last update, I’ve removed Aboriginal Affairs spending. I’ve also removed the Ottawa ridings. The reason is because there are such a large number of Aboriginal reserves in Western rural areas, and such a large number of government-funded NGOs and quasi-NGOs in the Ottawa region. These funding areas are important, accounting for billions of dollars a year, but they both bias the results in misleading ways: every government has a massive Indian Affairs budget and most of that goes to Conservative ridings because that’s where a lot of Aboriginal people are, so a Conservative government would look more unfair on my Pork Barrel ranking, and a (hypothetical) NDP government would look much fairer, in both cases purely because of a single funding envelope. It also saves me a lot of time, since there are thousands of entries on the Aboriginal Affairs disclosure list and nobody’s paying me to process them.
The result is that, among non-Aboriginal spending, actually the trend is surprising and interesting. It seems that in every region of Canada, funding was relatively equally distributed during the second quarter after the election. In fact, in no region (Western Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Maritimes) did Conservative ridings receive more funding than Opposition ridings, on average. The Liberals do well in the following charts because they tend to control the downtown cores, and the downtown cores are full of NGOs soaking up grant money:
The following charts compare spending in the first quarter, during which the election was held (ending in June), and the second quarter of the new government, ending in September:
To be honest, these were not the findings I was expecting, because it is the opposite of what previous analyses have shown, but I am happy to see them. As austerity programs deepen their cuts, we should expect government MPs to be exerting more and more pressure to ensure that the dwindling funds get directed to their ridings.
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Sir Francis
…we should expect government MPs to be exerting more and more pressure to ensure that the dwindling funds get directed to their ridings…
…or we might expect the PMO to target spending surgically at those swing ridings where the appearance of reasonable prosperity in otherwise hard times might push them into the blue. Harper’s long-term plan is to institutionalise his party; that requires growth and depth, not just consolidation. Wasting money on already conquered territory, on the Prairies for example, makes no sense. I expect to see the West progressively starved of federal funds, frankly, and a virtual deluge fall onto rural Quebec and urban Ontario.
I also think Harper’s tactics will likely go beyond mere ward heeling, which is easily detected and can be hugely embarrassing (viz. Tony Clement). He’ll likely sublimate and diffuse his agenda by handing out goodies to community groups (like the NGOs you allude to) that support his priorities, thus providing himself with the equivalent of tax-funded super PACs.
He’s already done a version of this on a grand scale. His new Office of Religious Freedom (concerning which notorious fundamentalist Charles McVety was privately consulted) is no doubt designed to communicate and advocate for Harper’s worldview through channels that appear neutral and institutional (and thus a priori legitimate). Harper’s nothing if not a keen student of history, and he must be aware of the precedent by which a contentious aspect of Canada’s self-understanding was normalised thorough the establishment of its bureaucratic embodiment (i.e., the secretariat of state for multiculturalism).
Sixth Estate
Francis — What you say about funding strategies is possible, but I’m not yet convinced. I may be underestimating the admittedly dismal yesmanship that prevails in Conservative ranks, but my own sense is that if there is really going to be an austerity regime, they will secure their territory first, if only because in the long term they know from their own experience what happens when Western conservatives decide they’ve been alienated from the greedy easterners. It may be helpful over the next couple years to look at what specific ridings are getting the lion’s share of funding, and that’s where your theory could be confirmed.
It’s more possible that NGO funding will be more targeted towards groups that support the government agenda; that’s definitely true to an extent, although to be fair, the business groups that get money today tend to be the same business groups that got funding a decade ago, too, I suspect. I think this is the sort of thing that needs to be paid attention to as well. Someone should think about that, and the Proactive Disclosure databases would be a place to start researching trends. A very good idea which, at least at the moment, I’m not sure I have the free time to chase down properly.
Finally, in terms of the Office of Religious Freedom, I think you’re reading more into this than there really is. Again, I may be proven wrong on this, but my sense is that it’s a token sop to the religious right. Such an office really can do little more than issue reports, which will no doubt be cribbed from their American counterparts. A sad and pathetic spectacle, to be sure, but it remains to be seen whether it will amount to anything. For the moment my sense is that it’s an effort best left ignored, but I will also be paying attention to anything it publishes and my opinion may change.