Meet the new pork, same as the old pork

Finance added cars eligible for green incentives: "Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's department made a last-minute change to the budget that allows cars built at the General Motors plant next to his riding to qualify for federal climate-change incentives even though environmentalists say the cars are gas guzzlers..."

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's department made a last-minute change to the budget that allows cars built at the General Motors plant next to his riding to qualify for federal climate-change incentives even though environmentalists say the cars are gas guzzlers.

Flaherty's riding wasn't the only beneficiary of the budget to profit from such amazing coincidences. That $300 million for cervical cancer vaccines? So happens they're made by just one company, Merck Frosst, which just so happens to employ Ken Boessenkool, one of Stephen Harper's closest confidantes, as its lobbyist. The $2-billion for biofuels? The Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, grateful recipient of this largesse, is another of Boessenkool's clients, not to mention employing longtime Reform and Conservative party activist Kory Teneycke as its executive director. And what's this about Harper's own lawyer lobbying the Prime Minister's Office?

But hey, what are you going to do? Forbid party strategists and former advisers to the Prime Minister from lobbying the government? Forbid the Finance Minister from doling out subsidies to well-connected business interests?

Um, yes, actually.

PORKDATE: And of course, there's the return of the sponsorship program: $30 million for "festivals celebrating heritage, arts and culture through dance, music and drama and re-enactments of local historical events." Only it won't be like that Liberal sponsorship program. Not at all: I mean, for one thing, they're not even calling it that.

Besides, what are you going to do? Make the organizers of local historical re-enactments raise funds on their own?