French Pork

Your "conservative" government at work:

On behalf of the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, the Honourable Senator Don Meredith today announced Government of Canada support to La Passerelle – Intégration et Développement économique for a project in Toronto that will promote leadership among young visible minority francophone women.

"Our Government is committed to the advancement of women in leadership roles throughout our country," said Minister Ambrose. "Through this project, young visible minority francophone women will gain important leadership skills to help them become the leaders of tomorrow."

Just in case you missed it: This is a group for promoting minority (i.e. non-white) francophone women in Toronto, a city where Greek is a more economically important language than French. This is micro-micro pork, pandering to the smallest imaginable constituency. Whereas much of the pork handed out by the Tories is to curry support with people who might vote their way, pandering to minority francophone women in Toronto is something else. It's unlikely these women will ever vote Conservative. Even if they do it's unlikely their support could swing a riding. 

The cost to taxpayers? 

La Passerelle – Intégration et Développement économique is receiving $200,000 in funding from the Government of Canada for its 24-month leadership project in Toronto. The project will target young visible minority francophone women aged 18 to 24 who are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.

So if your grandfather was an immigrant apparently you're out of luck. The program is ostensible to promote "leadership" among this tiny slice of Toronto's demography. Leadership is one of those weasel words much beloved of politicians, management consultants, business professors and other overpaid professional bullshitters. It can mean pretty much anything and often does. When an outfit talks about developing leadership skills they are, in general, admitting they have no useful skills to impart.

That is except in politics. Leadership in the political context means either getting elected or becoming some type of community organizer. While these are hardly risk-free professions, they can be quite lucrative. Note the end of the press release:

"Toronto will benefit greatly as more and more confident and capable young women from diverse backgrounds are empowered to meet the challenges and opportunities of leadership at the municipal level and in the education system."

Ahem. In a town with a severe shortage of skilled labour this outfit is "empowering" women to become politicians and educrats. In other words it is using government money to encourage certain women to cash in on winning the genetic lottery by becoming professional moochers. No one is much interested in "empowering" white western European men. This is because white western European men have privilege. This has always been a darkly amusing thought for me personally. When in university I was solemnly told by a black fellow undergrad that I benefited from systematic privilege that needed to be addressed.

Her parents were lawyers. My mother was a cleaning lady.

Such is the nature of privilege of modern Canada. 

So why is a nominally conservative government spending money on supporting low-grade race hustlers? Because these programs were set up decades ago by the political Left to help develop networks of support. The Left understood that ordinary people were interested in politics only so far as it entailed securing middle class entitlements. You can certainly grow a pretty big government on such freebies, but to get truly big government you need an agitator class. A group of people who live off the largess of the government, while being dedicated to getting more money from the government. These are the electoral foot soldiers and rent-a-mobs of the modern Left.

The Conservatives support these groups because they are afraid of them. Cutting off funding would provoke a massive backlash where the cry of racism would be repeated ad nauseam. For a party that spent a good two decades trying to protect itself from charges of bigotry, that's not a political option. The thinking goes that it is better to have these groups sort of on your side, since you are currently buttering their bread, than completely against you. There's a logic to that argument, at least in the short-term. Over the long-term the Tories are maintaining the political apparatus that will, come election time, put its full support into getting either the Liberals or NDP elected.

The Conservatives are funding their own destroyers. With our money. 

 

Comments

[Dwayne]

As foolish as it sounds every one of these pork products is political capital. The CPC can point to these micro-projects and difuse the media chant of how the party is racist, bigoted or whatnot.

Any time a government announces that they are "investing" in anything it pisses me off, as they are just spending money. But there are sectors of the public that lap this crap up, and the media just helps it along.

In the end, I can't see how the NDP or Liberals will be able to attack the CPC on the issues that they love the most as the CPC is just as bad. But as a real conservative, what choices are there? A bad CPC is still better than a good Liberal or NDP, way better.

[Gaylord]

The government cannot "invest" in anything unless they use someone else's money to do it.
And therein lies the answer to our deficit.

[Roseberry]

Is it not possible as well that the Government, having accepted the Official Languages Act and recognized that the country does indeed have and will continue to have two official languages, is seeking to encourage a Canadian, federalist counter-weight to the influence of Québec? The OLA has been a gravy train for Québecois, providing jobs for the boys and girls across the country and influence in the civil service and other public agencies far beyond that of residents of any other province. Encouraging non-pur laine francophone immigrants to aspire to "leadership" roles may be just one way to say to Québec that even the bi-lingual character of Canada is not dependent on the whims of the Québecois.

[Cytotoxic]

Okay...then these new 'leaders' will be non-Quebecois statists.

"A bad CPC is still better than a good Liberal or NDP, way better."

No it isn't. A good Liberal can balance a budget and maybe take a sane stance on drugs.

"The CPC can point to these micro-projects and difuse the media chant of how the party is racist, bigoted or whatnot."

No they can't and won't. That's just how it is. This just goes to show what a strategic dunderhead Harper is.