More Conservative "Consultation".

From Basil Berntsen's blog I found out about the federal government "consulting" Canadians about the upcoming budget. If you don't get to this by noon on the 28th of February, don't bother, that's when it's over. There are two things that get me about this "consultation".

First it would appear that they Tories didn't go out of their way to tell anyone about it. In this sense it would seem that they only wanted the "right" people to answer the questions. This is similar to their "consultation" on higher education which they didn't bother to advertise either. Open and accountable to the Conservatives would appear to mean open and accountable only to those they wish, not the people in general.

The second concern I have with this "consultation" is that the whole survey is geared towards getting the answers that the Conservatives want so that they can follow their ideological agenda. For example:

Here's the first page. You get to rank the Conservatives' pet ideas. You don't get a choice of anything else. The next page you get 50 words for each idea to describe what you think of their pet ideas and that's it. So basically the Tories have the budget all set up and just want to be able to go to the press and say that the people that responded to their phony-baloney "consultation" agreed with their priorities. Easy to do since they only choices you have are the priorities of the Conservative party.

Stephen Harper has a long way to go to prove to me that he and his party are any less arrogant or corrupt than the party they replaced. Open and accountable indeed.