Seth Wenig/AP
What's the federal government up to today? Spending $190,000 on doughnuts.
Stephen Harper's Conservative government announced they'd pony up $190,000 for Mrs. Dunster's Donut of New Brunswick. The money, for a cold-storage freezer, is supposed to help the doughnut-maker sell more doughnuts. It is part of a string of small funding announcements the government has been making since Parliament closed shop two weeks ago.
As opposition leader, Stephen Harper railed against governments picking winners and losers with loans and grants to corporations, and revived former NDP leader David Lewis's blast at "corporate welfare bums." "Unfortunately, in the past 30 years, too many corporations have been drawn into this trap by the available plethora of government loans, grants, and subsidies," he complained in 2004. At the time, he promised to save $4-billion in government fat by cutting those programs.
Campbell Clark