Paving the way for Tories — feedback

Contrarian reader Wallace J. McLean wonders:

How does the map of road work requested by Premier Fiddler compare to the provincial electoral map as it stood prior to dissolution?

It’s an obvious question, but from a look at the map, I doubt the answer would turn up anything nefarious.

Provincial paving, by its nature, takes place mainly in rural ridings. That’s where provincial roads are. Before June 9, Tories held most of the province’s rural constituencies, so most of the proposed projects were undoubtedly in Tory ridings. To show bias, one would have to demonstrate that province’s proposed infrastructure projects disproportionately favored Tory ridings like the premier’s over rural Liberal ridings like Stephen McNeil’s.

Mr. McLean is welcome to test this hypothesis by going through the list and calculating the number of projects proposed per rural Tory riding vs. the number proposed per rural opposition riding. I’ll publish the results.

But it will take a fair bit of work just to figure out the riding where each project is located, and I’ll be surprised if the results show anything like the bias apparent in the Harper government’s approvals.