Not to begrudge anyone anything

Craig Westcott, in his CBC Commentary piece on Monday, said:

The St. John's area, which has nearly half the population of the whole province, is getting a whole one million dollars out of the 66 million the government is spending this year.

[...]

Meanwhile, Labrador, where Hickey is from, is getting some 34 million dollars worth of road work this year.

It may actually be more than that.

I lost count of the projects and funding for the region.

Now I don't begrudge anyone in Labrador their road work.

But it seems passing strange that a place with less than six per cent of the population is getting over half the provincial roads budget.

It's a good thing that he's not into begrudging.

Still, you have to wonder... where were people like Craig Westcott when Labrador, which has always had a population share of greater than zero, was getting, for decades, zero percent of the roads budget?

And since when should highways budgets be doled out on a per-capita basis, anyway?

More to the point, though, a good journalist like Westcott really ought to be asking, how much of the money promised to Labrador is Labrador actually getting? You can't build or pave highways with an IOU; the $1-million for St. John's is, literally, infinitely more valuable than the $35-million in imaginary federal money which the House of Assembly has voted itself for the TLH in four of the past five fiscal exercises.

And why is so much of the money promised to Labrador contingent on getting a commensurate amount from the federal government? Why the double-standard? Why don't Newfoundland journalists ever ask John Hickey or Danny Williams important questions like these?

And when Westcott rhetorically asked:

Has Hickey even driven the arterial road between CBS and St. John's I wonder, with its patchwork quilt of potholes, ruts and crumbling asphalt?

you just know the entire CBC listening audience in Labrador rhetorically asked, "what is this 'asphalt'?"