Dunderlove

My, but the Williams Government Provincial Government Dunderdale2011s have been doling out the cash, what?

Now, of course, this has nothing to do with any impending election. (Nothing could be further from the truth.) Instead, it's all for a noble purpose:

“The business of governing the province cannot be stalled for a lengthy time period just because of a fixed election date. And it is completely appropriate that our government inform residents of how public moneys are being spent.”

The Word of Our Kath. And, of course, this is just the normal course of government business, nothing to do with the election, a point easily proven by going back and looking at press releases from the same time last year. Right?

Herewith, a Pretty Chart showing the amount of funding announced by Ministers AND local MHAs, by week (the dates are for the Monday), over the course of the summer.

Funding announced without the involvement of a local MHA is not even considered in this chart; only the crassest local politicking informing residents of how public moneys are being spent is included. Funding where, by nature of the announcement, there is no local MHA to give credit to, or where the local MHA, for mysterious reasons, was shut out from credit, is omitted for the purpose of this exercise.

Where funding announcements involved contributions by other orders of government, only the Williams Provincial Dunderdale2011 contribution is included in the total.

Yes, that's over an $80-million week which ended on Wednesday, capping off a summer of $211-million worth of announcements for hard-working local PC MHAs, not to mention the further adventurers in regional and pan-provincial Happy Money doled out by Ministers alone.

So sad for the Dunderdale2011's self-imposed deadline of the end of August to shovel all the money out the door; imagine how high the bar could have gone if the press releases were still rolling out until Friday.

So that's it now. Well, of course, barring those wink-wink nudge-nudge "unforeseen circumstances."