PM Harper & Shawn Graham with self-described wonderful relationship = $400 million for road upgrades (about the same the feds gave over the past five years).
PM Harper & Rodney MacDonald with deep resentment on both sides = $1.2 billion Frigate upgrades
PM Harper & Lorne Calvert – Calvert is suing Harper over Equalization = $$ hundreds of millions for biofuel sector development.
Hmmmm.
NB gets about the same road funding as before.
NS and SK get hundreds of millions of new federal government investment – in key sector development areas.
Now for those of you who like highway funding. Those who say you need roads to generate economic development, I say this. Northern Maine. Some of the best four lane highways you have ever seen and essentially no economic development four a hundred miles.
I don’t like all this shuffling of funding and then announcing it as new funding. Tourism funding for the Fundy Trail – out of money already allocated to ACOA.
Funding for highways – about the same as before.
Dropping COOPERATION and Fed/Prov money, giving to ACOA as innovation money and calling it new money.
But I digress.
What I want to see is that ‘goodwill’ between Graham and Harper to translate into sector development money. Sask. wants biofuels? Fine. We want data centres. $400 million to transform New Brunswick into a North American hub for data centres.