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Not all of B.C. MP’s new Parks Canada funding announcement is new

MP David Wilks represents the Kootenay-Columbia riding for the Conservative party. (Handout)

It’s an election year, so voters might be able to expect more than the usual number of political gaffes.

The latest comes from Conservative MP David Wilks, who admitted a $32.6-million oops in a funding announcement he made earlier this month.

The British Columbia MP for Kootenay-Columbia said the federal government was investing $156 million in capital improvements in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks — projects like bridge repairs, Trans-Canada Highway paving, avalanche mitigation and other improvements.

But eagle-eyed readers of the Revelstoke Mountaineer tipped the newspaper off that many of the “new” projects on the list had been covered in the 2014 budget.

Wilks admitted to the Mountaineer on Sunday that he had overstated the number by $32.6.

“I made a mistake,” he said, listing several projects that were indeed from last year’s budget. “So the 2015 announcement should have been $123.4 million.”

Ahead of the election call expected any day now, ministers across the country have been busy announcing “new investments” at Parks Canada sites — funds that were already earmarked in previous budgets: there was $14.3 million in Manitoba; $20 million in Halifax; $16 million in Northern Ontario. On Wednesday, it was Prince Edward Island’s turn to the tune of $24 million.

In fact, it’s all coming from the $2.8 billion in infrastructure funding for national historic sites, parks and marine conservation areas that Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in November 2014. And even that money was part of $5.8-billion set aside for infrastructure in the Economic Action Plan 2013.

“It’s not new in two senses,” says McGill University economics professor Tom Velk. “It’s a budget ago, and (the minister) is playing the same old game trying to buy you with your own money.

The “new” money manoeuvre is an old tactic — and it’s not limited to one party.

“Every government announces and re-announces — that’s just become standard operating procedure in the last 30 years,” says Nelson Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. The main reason: “because they find they get a lot of free media for it.”

Wiseman thinks those types of funding announcements have only “very local impact” anyway — and even then, Wilks’ faux pas isn’t likely to have much impact on his constituency.

“It’s an error, but he has nothing to do with deciding the budget anyway… it’s just not a big thing,” Wiseman says. “What really matters is whether this fact resonates in the national campaign.”

Once the election campaign begins, the funding announcements will have to stop. MPs will be permitted only to boast about the past and make promises for the future.