Playing politics

Danny Williams’ reaction to Stephen Harper’s laying on of federal cash in New Brunswick was most interesting. As cobbled together from a CP and Canada East report:

“I wish Premier Graham well. Whatever he can do to advance the issues of his province, I certainly do wish him well…

I guess it’s a divide and conquer mentality from the prime minister’s perspective. Premier [Rodney] MacDonald and I have been the anti-federal government for want of a better (deal) because they haven’t fulfilled our promise. Perhaps he’s going to try and appease New Brunswickers and others. I don’t know what the reason for his visit [to New Brunswick] is, but all I know is that it’s politically motivated.

I don’t think that’s the way a prime minister should operate. If he thinks he’s punishing us by giving funds to New Brunswick, I’m not going to play that game. The childishness doesn’t become a prime minister.”

There you have it: announcing highway funding shouldn’t be politically motivated. And highways funding shouldn’t be doled out to appease or to punish. That’s just childish.

Moving right along, on a totally unrelated topic, here is a handy, colour-coded graph, showing the allocation, by provincial electoral district, for Provincial Roads Improvement Program for 2007, as cobbled together from provincial government press releases. (This does not include highways funding from provincial or cost-shared programs, only PRIP.)

Here is the comparable chart for 2006:

And 2005:

And 2004 (the figure for Trinity-Bay de Verde has been arbitrarily set to $1-million, as the costs of four projects were not given):

Finally, for good measure, here's the equivalent for 2001. (2003 and 2002 figures were not press-released on a dollar-per-district basis.)

No punishment. No appeasement. No divide-and-conquer. And certainly, absolutely, without a doubt in the world, nothing politically motivated, absolutely nothing, can be gleaned from those figures.