This Is NOT What We Voted For......

Taking a page from Chretien

When it comes to pork-barrelling self-promotion, the Tories look a lot like the Liberals

National Post Published: Saturday, October 17, 2009

The federal Conservatives were elected in 2006 on a promise to do better than the Liberals.

Stephen Harper pledged to end an array of Liberal abuses. No more care and feeding of Liberal-friendly lobbyists and cronies. No more fat contracts directed to Liberal firms. No more stuffing public bodies -- from courts to the Senate to the bureaucracy -- with Liberal fellow travellers. No more Liberal hubris, no more Liberal hypocrisy.

Instead, after a few early efforts, Mr. Harper's government resorted to co-opting the Liberal playbook and refining, rather than eliminating, its many tricks. The Conservatives proudly introduced the Accountability Act, but remain reluctant to hold themselves accountable for much of anything. On Thursday, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson dismissed the latest attempt to improve Canada's privacy and access-to-information laws, arguing that a collection of proposed reforms were unnecessary and cumbersome.

Cumbersome is an apt word for the system Canadians must endure in seeking access to public information. As journalists, we can attest that the delays are lengthy, the user fees are arbitrary and the information -- when and if it is eventually supplied -- is likely to be heavily edited. The Conservatives can claim to have widened the access program to include new Crown corporations, but extending a broken system is hardly a satisfactory improvement.

In other areas, the Conservatives have taken the worst of Liberal practices and adapted them for Tory use. Liberal dominance of the Senate has been eroded with a steady stream of Conservative appointees, with the Prime Minister often picking Tory bagmen and partisan faithful. Boards, commissions, advisory bodies and the gamut of rich pickings available for patronage appointments likewise have been "balanced" with obedient Conservatives.

A party that used to rail at the Liberals' willingess to direct public money to Liberal ridings, and its shameless toadying to Quebec, now pours money into Conservative constituencies and laughs off its own egregiously partisan activities in Nova Scotia as just the way the locals like to do business.

The latest uproar, over the government's propensity for including its party logo on giant ceremonial cheques used to distribute stimulus money, could be dismissed as just more of the same, were it not for the brazenness of the Tory reaction. The Prime Minister's Office sent out a memo to MPs advising that logos were not allowed, but chief spokesman Dimitri Soudas assured local MPs there was nothing to stop them putting their own names on the cheques, and defended their right to claim credit for successfully funneling public money to benefit their ridings.

That's an attitude we've seen before, from haughty and complacent Liberal regimes so accustomed to power they came to treat it as a right. After less than four years in office, the Harper government appears to have similarly lost sight of the fact the money it spreads around so enthusiastically belongs to Canadians, not to Conservatives. The aim of stimulus money is to offset the worst effects of a re-cessionary economy, not to win votes for the local Tory MP.

This government spends heavily on promoting itself. Canadians have become accustomed to TV ads presenting its economic program as a Conservative good deed, paid for with taxes that could have been put to better use elsewhere. When Conservative MPs hand over money, they not only put their own name on the cheque, the do their best to prevent MPs from any other party showing up to share in the credit.

Mr. Harper is fortunate for the moment in facing a disorganized and ineffective opposition, but Michael Ignatieff may yet figure out how to offer a viable alternative. Hypocrisy and hubris lost the Liberals the support of Canadians, and cost them their hold on power. They could do the same for the Conservatives if they continue disregard the principles they were elected on.