A theme worth repeating

Paul Wells:

While Colleague ITQ tries to make head or tail of the Ablonczy/Pride fiasco, here’s a little background on the miserably ill-conceived, comically shoddily administered Marquee Tourism Events program from which the money to Toronto Pride flowed.
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In the end, as one furious Citizen columnist pointed out, this particular Marquee Tourism Event ended up producing an Event That Cannot Possibly Have Attracted Any Tourists, because one simply doesn’t wake up in, say, Cleveland and say, “You mean Terence Blanchard is in Ottawa tonight? By God, if I hurry I just might make it.”

The point of the Marquee Tourism Event, as with the veritable bazaar being run out of Canadian Heritage these days, is to buy back some of the peace and quiet the Harper government lost last year with all that unfortunate business about cuts to assorted arts programs on the eve of the federal election. That led to unpleasant electoral consequences. So this year, James Moore and assorted substitutes have been shovelling money off the back of a truck in a bid to win back the affection of people who want taxpayer money to support arts and culture. But the really big money is over at MTE, in Industry. I had an executive at one of the program’s biggest recipients tell me he was not entirely sure how to spend all the cash that had been dumped on him, because — at the risk of repeating a theme — he hadn’t been given enough time to make many intelligent decisions.