Federal patronage paving rural N.S. roads, blogger finds - Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau
Thu. Jun 18 - 4:46 AM
OTTAWA -- The federal Tories appear to be using infrastructure stimulus spending to reward Conservative ridings in Nova Scotia with hot tar, according to research by blogger Parker Donham.
The province submitted a list of rural paving projects to the federal government to get a piece of a $4-billion fund designed to stimulate the economy during the global recession.
On April 30, the two levels of government announced $55.8 million in projects. Mr. Donham, a former journalist, used the province's freedom of information law to get the list of projects that the province submitted for federal approval.
He found that the province had proposed 39 paving projects, but only 20 were approved. Of those, 10 were in Tory ridings and seven others were in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, which was represented by Independent Bill Casey until recently. A byelection in the traditionally Tory riding must be scheduled for the months ahead.
"Projects in ridings held by Conservative MPs were almost four times as likely to receive federal approval as those in Liberal-held ridings," wrote Mr. Donham on his blog, http://contrarian.ca.
Nova Scotia has a long tradition of winning rural votes with the judicious application of pavement.
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