Stories like these are gifts from the mint:
The Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, announces that the organization Festival de montgolfières de Gatineau Inc. has been granted federal funding for the international and out-of-province commercialization of the 26th Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival.
“This financial support from the Government of Canada to the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival will help further the objectives of enhancing the event’s notoriety and increasing its tourism drawing power on foreign markets,” said Minister Lebel.
I do love the fussy insistence on calling ministers of the crown "honourable." It's like when police officers refer to drunks and bums as "sir." You bemoan the debasement of the language, while being bleakly amused by the irony. The irony in this particular case cost the taxpayers $120,000. A pittance to the modern federal Leviathan, but more than twice the annual income for an average citizen. There are parts of Toronto where that much money will get you a broom closet and a bicycle stand.
So what did the Festival de montgolfières de Gatineau Inc. do with all that lovely lucre?
The funding from Canada Economic Development will enable the Festival to pursue the Web marketing efforts it launched several years ago and to carry out various studies.
Ah. Nothing so reassuring as the phrase "various studies." Like looking at an income statement with an unusually large miscellaneous line item. Nothing technically wrong with it. Just a tad unsettling. You feel a slight queasiness as money mysteriously leeches out the door. But I'm sure all the rules have been followed. Which is ultimately the problem.
If the Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, had walked out of his office with a briefcase stuffed with $120,000, the police would be called. It would not matter a whit if that money was for himself, or for some worthy vote buying cause.
Yet morally what is the difference?
If the minister has all the appropriate forms filled out, or doesn't, he is still using taxpayer money to buy votes. There is no plausible definition of free government that requires the state, much less the federal establishment, to be funding "various studies" for a hot air balloon festival. It strains credulity to think that John A Macdonald, George Brown or Oliver Mowatt envisioned a nation where the federal government not only guarantees your health care but also preserves the solemn natural right to watch balloon festivals in both official languages.
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