On co-pilots

There should never have been much doubt that the Cons' idea of cooperation with the Libs was to have both parties working together for the greater glory of Stephen Harper. And it's only having worked in tandem to get Harper's pork barrel express going at full speed that the Libs are recognizing that the Cons' spending isn't designed to stimulate much of anything beyond their own hopes of re-election:

(T)he Harper government announced it was shelling out a generous $210,000 for bridge repairs in Kingston, the riding long held by Liberal MP (and Commons speaker) Peter Milliken.

Public Works Minister Christian Paradis could have kept the press release for his own self-aggrandizement.

Instead, the release also quotes MP Daryl Kramp who, by complete chance, happens to be Conservative and whose Belleville riding is about an hour from Kingston.

Surprise! No mention of Milliken anywhere.

Elsewhere across the country, if the opposition parties are getting federal largesse to spread around their ridings, no one seems to know about it.

Most of the calls we made around to Liberal and NDP circles were met with loud guffaws.

Of course, there's one problem with the Libs now highlighting just how laughable it always was to think that the Cons would use federal money for purposes other than their own political interests. After all, there's no reason at all why that outcome couldn't have been easily foreseen when the Libs made the choice to keep propping up the Harper government.

Unfortunately, Michael Ignatieff chose that outcome rather than a path which would have led to better results for everybody but Harper and his party. And while that means that the joke is ultimately on the Libs, there would figure to be few people laughing outside the Conservatives' ranks.