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The Cons' misuse of public money for their own ends has managed to become far more widely recognized over the past few days thanks to Gerald Keddy and others.

But the more important damage to the public interest almost certainly involves money spent with far less attention. Which means that the newly-installed procurement ombudsman's report that there's serious reason for concern about billions of sole-sourced contracts would look to be the type of development which can tie the party logo issue into wider mismanagement and partisan favouritism:

Too many federal contracts are being snapped up by favoured suppliers without real competition, says Canada's procurement watchdog.

Departments hand out plum contracts to lone suppliers at prices that might be lower if other companies were given a proper chance to bid, Shahid Minto suggests in his first report to Parliament.

The report draws on a review of some of the $1.7 billion worth of sole-source contracts the federal government signed between 2005 and 2007.
...
Minto's report, which focused on Health Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, National Defence and Fisheries and Oceans, found it was too easy to skew the procurement process in favour of suppliers that officials preferred. For example, there was scant evidence in the files that bureaucrats did any homework about other potential suppliers.

While there are plenty of possible follow-up questions, the most important one for now would seem to be whether any Con-connected suppliers who weren't getting federal business in 2005 suddenly found themselves as "preferred" suppliers sharing in federal largesse once Harper took power. And if there is evidence of that combination of mismanagement and partisan preference in spending going back to Harper's first days in power, then it'll be all the tougher for the Cons to pretend they've done anything but rebrand the worst of the Libs' patronage politics with a blue colour scheme.