White elephants on parade

On the federal scene, a remarkable amount of attention and energy has been devoted to the Cons' stadium-funding talk over the past week - featuring a fair amount of cross-partisan opinion as a few actual right-wing deficit hawks point out the frivolity and futility of most of the plans.

But this looks to be the kind of issue where conservative theory conflicts most directly with how right-wing governments operate in practice for a couple of key reasons - making it seem more likely than not that the Cons will happily take the opportunity to promote their own profile at public expense.

After all, the Cons look to be entirely happy to drain Canada's public coffers as much as possible to keep resources from being put to more socially responsible uses by future governments. In that sense, the stadium projects can be seen as similar to their much-panned GST cuts and comically useless "environmental" programs, serving more to limit future federal fiscal capacity than to accomplish anything positive.

But while they'll be happy to give away public money simply so nobody else can use it, the Cons do want to get some political value for it where they can. Which makes stadium construction a natural follow-up to a stimulus program which has allowed the Cons to develop their taste for gratuitous photo ops and other publicly-funded advertising. While Harper and company obviously don't have any interest in extending the potentially useful parts of infrastructure spending, they're surely happy to put up hundreds of millions of dollars in order to take centre stage in the development of new vanity projects - particularly when their media ally Pierre Karl Péladeau figures to be one of the main beneficiaries.

Mind you, the political calculations might be different if the Cons saw any risk that their utterly undeserved managerial branding might be at risk. But any cost to the Cons figures to be minimal given that the Libs have been taking a lead role in pushing for stadium funding.

Of course, it's fair enough to point out that the Cons' irresponsibility seems to match exactly the factors which caused Canada's right-wing movement to fall apart just a couple of decades ago. But that kind of fissure may only emerge in the face of a stable government of some stripe - and by the time one turns up, we may already be stuck with an ever-expanding bill for the Cons' stadium projects.