Oh, man, the entertainment value. Once again, let's revisit "non-partisan" Blogging Tory Sandy Crux and her vaunted list of CPoC accomplishments, shall we? Recall that, once upon a time, Sandy's list contained the following alleged accomplishment:
Signed Patient Wait Time Guarantee agreements with all provinces and territories;
a bit of braggadocio that I disposed of handily here. Now, one can only assume that someone has pointed this out to Ms. Crux since her updated list linked to above now has the somewhat wimpier entry:
Provided $612 million in new funding to help provinces reduce patient wait times;
Well, now, that's quite the backpedaling, isn't it? So Captain Charisma really hasn't done anything in terms of reducing wait times (despite that being one of his original campaign promises). Instead, he's (oh, this is so delightful) simply thrown money at the provinces and told them to take care of it.
One wonders how this still qualifies as part of the Harper government "record" if the CPoC didn't actually enforce those wait times, but it gets even funnier when you read Sandy's opening disclaimer where she makes it clear what counts as an accomplishment and what doesn't:
To the best of my knowledge, this written “Harper government record” does not include political promises or spin, legislation that is not yet law, proposed plans that have not yet been adopted or proposed policies that involve provincial and territorial jurisdictions (e.g., child care spaces and patient wait times).
Indeed. Sandy, sweetie, you really need to make a choice here and get off the fence. You can't, on the one hand, claim victory here in terms of patient wait times, only to dump the responsibility for enforcing said wait times in the laps of the provinces. In short, you can't take all of the credit and none of the blame. And, by the way, what's with this strategy of just throwing money at a problem? Last time I looked, that was such a liberal thing to do. When the hell did that change?
SPEAKING OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS, you have to wonder how Sandy managed to justify this one:
Improved national unity by passing the motion to confirm “Quebecois as a nation within a united Canada;”
Wow. "Improved national unity?" It doesn't get much more nebulous or less quantifiable than that, does it? I believe the phrase "the bottom of the barrel" suggests itself here.
4 comments:
I’ll be a broken record about this, because it really irks me on a number of levels. But it’s actually much worse than simply not delivering on his promise and throwing lavish amounts of money at the problem. Given that Team Harper scrapped the accountability and oversight provisions related to transfers of money in this area to the provinces, there’s now absolutely no way of telling where that $.6 billion is going (general revenues, that’s where!) and the convenient little arrangement with the provinces whereby they can designate their own two areas where wait-times will supposedly be reduced invariably ends up with the “targeted” (*cough*) areas being those which the provinces have already prioritized themselves and are (or so they claim) at or just about nearly at achieving their objectives. So really, it’s all just a huge fraudulent sham, both on the part of the federal government and the provinces. The transfer is really quite meaningless in terms of actually doing what it purports to, which involves “taming the queue” or some such thing.
One wonders where she gets her information (not including here).
Okay, one need not.
RT, as long as the money goes toward meritorious initiatives, there's no prob - oops, sorry, those were other monies, bound for elsewhere, weren't they?
I could be wrong here, but I get the impression that ol' Sandy here never had to stick around for the post-implementation phase of any policy recommendation or programme planning to face full-on the reality of a proper evaluation that determines real success.
That's why people become consultants after all and some of us know how sweet it is to be paid and long gone before anyone gets a real sense of whether the contracted work resulted in value for money.
Sounds like it should be in a Powerpoint presentation. Who knows, maybe it is.
That’s pretty hilarious that the ol’ Crock of the Matter should think that nonsensical motion improved national unity. Just wait until the provincial government starts putting to the test what that actual encompasses. I think the ADQ seems to believe it’s more than just “symbolic” window-dressing and Charest was making some noises about testing the water in that regard.
But it sure does sound keen in her non-partisan presentation of “just the facts” doesn’t it?
Oh, and I guess that $.8 billion kickback in “equalization payments” to address the “fiscal imbalance: (*snort*) didn’t exactly hurt the national unity cause either…
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