On costly thanks

I can only assume that Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty somehow thinks he's defending the Cons' G8 scandal by speaking out. But if anything, his comments only raise more serious questions about how the Harper Cons have consistently abused public money:

Claude Doughty, mayor of Huntsville, the main site of the summit in Ontario’s Muskoka region, defended the program, saying some of the projects were meant more as a “thank you” to area municipalities for being host than as G8-related facilities.

“I don’t think there was ever any intent that some of them would be used by the world leaders,” he said. “You have to appreciate that a lot of people in Muskoka did a lot of work to prepare for the G8, myself included. And for those municipalities that went out of their way to really do those things, this was a bit of a token of saying, ‘Thank you.’”

So what's new about Doughty's response? Well, until now the Cons had normally at least tried to pretend that their G8 spending had something to do with the conference. But on Doughty's account, a substantial chunk of money was spent on projects that everybody knew had nothing to do even with the G8 - let alone with the border security fund the Cons used as their pot of money to dole out G8 largesse.

In other words, even the Cons' own allies say they were paying off their friends with our money - all while covering up the true nature of the funding. And however Doughty thinks he's justifying the Cons' actions from a local perspective, I'd fully expect the inconvenient questions he's unwittingly raised to ensure that he'll never ride the Cons' gravy train again.