The newest audit by the Auditor General has found out a few secrets on the so-called Economic Action Plan. First of all, every project approved was done so without the "standard" environmental assessment to see if a project would kill a few species here and there. This does not come as a surprise because the Conservatives have never cared that much about the environment to spend a little more time worrying about it. Another interesting fact discovered by the Auditor General was that the 130 000 jobs supposedly "created" by the bailout plan are not exact. These numbers are largely derived from anecdotes. But as we saw in the plan to kill the long-form census, statistics don't play a large part in the Tories' policies. But, all in all, the stimulus plan did create jobs, we don't know exactly how many, nor do we know the environmental impacts. Along with spending should come responsibility for the follow-up. All of which this government did not do.
OTTAWA—Shortcuts in the Conservatives’ environmental approval process for projects under the economic stimulus plan may have created a wave of environmental damage, Auditor General Sheila Fraser says.
Thousands of construction projects were excluded from standard environmental screening under a never-publicly-debated directive by the Conservative cabinet as the federal government rushed out $47 billion in economic stimulus, according to Fraser’s audit.
Read more at the
Toronto Star.
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