AG to provide evidence against ‘stimulus spending theory’

It is widely believed that Auditor General Shelia Fraser’s report will demonstrate that stimulus money was distributed on a political basis. This wouldn’t be a difficult conclusion to reach; the theoretical work was already done by a certain University of Calgary Masters student. Politicians will naturally favour their own supporters in their decisions. That is how governments come to power and stay in power.

The opposition parties will make lots of political hay out of this report, and rightly so. But the reality is that they would have done the same thing. Perhaps to a lesser extent, or maybe even to a greater extent, but they would have certainly done the same. The problem is not with the particular party in power but in the system.

You can’t fix the system either. The root of the problem is human nature. Even if you try and be objective in your decisions you will likely subconsciously favour the person you like/supports you. There is a natural bias in every government, and changing the ruling party has only ever succeeded in changing the direction of the bias.

The solution is simple: do not give politicians or officials this much money to spend.

Power tends to corrupt, and the only true way to prevent corruption is not to give power. There is no evidence that the deficit spending helped the economy. All that it did was provide the government with an opportunity to redistribute our tax dollars to their supporters.

So instead of using the AG’s report to decry the shamefulness of the Conservative government, we should look at this report as one more piece of evidence that Canada’s experiment with ‘stimulus’ spending has failed.