WHY ARE CONSERVATIVE-RUN CANADIAN PROVINCES TURNING DOWN FEDERAL CASH? THE ANSWER’S IN THE REPUBLICAN PLAYBOOK
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau observed back on April 16 that the Ontario provincial government led by Premier Doug Ford was throwing roadblocks in the way of Ontario municipalities accessing federal money for needed transportation infrastructure, Conservatives responded with angry denials, and not just in Ontario.
The prime minister had told a news conference Kitchener, Ont., that over the previous year Mr. Ford’s Conservative government hadn’t approved a single infrastructure project for which federal funds were available. Mr. Trudeau called this an example of Mr. Ford’s government “letting down Ontarians.”
But surely this little blip on the political radar, soon forgotten in the news coverage of the Alberta general election results that evening, from which Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party emerged triumphant, seems more credible in light of recent revelations.
I speak, of course, of the news last week that Manitoba’s Conservative provincial government has also refused to accept an offer from Ottawa to provide $5 million in federal carbon tax funds to finance green enhancements at elementary and secondary schools. The sum may be small, but, as they say, it’s not the lousy five million bucks, it’s the principle of the thing.
The offer was part of a broader federal program to use money from Ottawa’s carbon tax to upgrade schools in the four Conservative-run provinces that refused to introduce their own carbon-pricing systems and therefore fell under the federal carbon tax legislation, against which Andrew Scheer’s federal Conservatives have chosen to campaign.
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