12
Jan
Jan
Paul Martin defends his record on the military:
“I’ve probably put more money into the military than almost any prime minister,” said Martin, in his most comprehensive remarks regarding defence during this campaign thus far.
Got that? Let’s read it again once more:
“I’ve probably put more money into the military than almost any prime minister,” said Martin, in his most comprehensive remarks regarding defence during this campaign thus far.
Sure.
Via Neale News
Technorati Tags: Canada, election, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper, Neale News
Popularity: 7% [?]
January 12th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Is he counting his time as PM, or is he including the time he spent at Finance as well? Maybe he’s including the time he spent “growing up” as a child in the House of Commons.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Good one.
January 12th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I believe that it was PM the finance minister that froze the salaries of all civil servants, that included the military members too.
He also cut the defence budget by about 25% in 1994. And as spending increased between 1997 and 2004 his spending on defence matters didn’t increase quite the same.
For some reason the documents on the Dept of Fin webpage does not go back before 1997-1998. I wonder, as it used to be online.
For some info on defence spending Check out Babbling Brooks here:
http://babblingbrooks.blogspot.com/2005/03/cogging-in-media-machine.html
and The Phantom Observer here:
http://phantomobserver.blogspot.com/2005/03/defence-spending-too-good-to-be-true.html
I will also state that the numbers they used are from the CP story, but if you go to the Dept. of Finance website and look in the expenditures, the amounts for 1997-2003 are over, what I saw was much less then what the CP had for numbers.
Go here: http://www.fin.gc.ca/purl/afr-e.html
Pick a year after 1996 and have a look at the Budgetary expenditures to see what the money is spent on. I see only (only!) $8,879 Million for the year 1997-98.
http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr/1999/afr99_3e.html
Paul Martin will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to win some votes. I hope he enjoys running CSL again.
January 12th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
This is so infuriating. Dwayne does the research that some, no, any reporter should have done to call Martin out on his claim.
January 12th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
Sometimes I think the media doesn’t want to do the fact checks. I always thought that was a job for the aspiring reporter in a large organization, the interns out there.
Fact checking is now the specialty of the unwashed masses with the internet at their fingertips
Everytime Paul Martin opens his mouth and lies about something, there is someone out there ready to fact check his butt off and disprove the statement. In the end, I think that the bloggers are having an effect on the media!
January 12th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I think this election might be the first time in Canada that Bloggers really had some sort of effect.
Onward and upward.
January 12th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
You can bet your hynie bloggers have had an effect on this election even though very few journalists will ever admit it.
Just ask The Kate, for example, how many hits per days she gets from big media. I’ll bet it’s in the hundreds. Same for Angry.
January 12th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Maybe he probably nearly put the most effort trying to almost look into the possibility that someone could have been partially dipping their hands into what might have been ad sponsorship money which may or may not have found a winding path into what some call Liberal pockets.
Way to dither there Pauly Boy.
January 12th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
keep up the great work. keep the MSM to the fire. maybe someday we will get the truth.
January 13th, 2006 at 12:40 am
Dwayne has it right…..MSM and fact checking are becoming mutually exclusive terms…………shame.
January 13th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Kudos to Canadian Bloggers!
You Canadian bloggers are doing a wonderful job, ferreting out the lies of the Grits and the laziness and/or incompetence and/or bias of so much of Canada’s MSM that’s lefty.
Someone could write a book-I hope someone does-about the 2006 election and the effects thereon by the Blogosphere!
January 13th, 2006 at 3:06 am
There are many “types” in the MSM.
There are the “Reporters” who will repeat what they observe with their senses (hear, see, etc). They often don’t consider it their job to consider, let alone report, whether what is said is true or false: they claim to be objective observers, not subjective fact-checkers.
There are the “columnists” who will write an opinion piece based on what they have gleaned from the past weeks and years. Most would consider them subjective regarding a pundit’s claims, and don’t expect a “fisking” from them.
There are the “journalists” who will do in-depth pieces about this or that, uncovering issues which had previously been buried. They typically have a long-term assignment based on some snippet they picked up; “fisking” isn’t their game.
But what I find to be typically missing are those “sojourners” who will research the factum in a given press release and either expound on it as fact, or deride it as a fiction.
So who in the media will do a proper “fisking” of the dailies? Unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to sell, so the role goes unpaid.
Through the blogosphere, folks like Dwayne can begin to fill in that research gap (Thank-you, Dwayne!). The only remaining piece is for the Reporters to pick up on the data, and do with it as they do with other data: report it.
January 13th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Paul: bonus points for the use of the word “sojourner”!
January 13th, 2006 at 9:42 am
I will also state that the numbers they used are from the CP story, but if you go to the Dept. of Finance website and look in the expenditures, the amounts for 1997-2003 are over, what I saw was much less then what the CP had for numbers.
Dwayne, when I originally got that phone call from Stephen Thorne, the CP journalist who eventually put the story into the mainstream, he told me he had defence budget figures dating back years and didn’t know how to adjust for inflation as I had in my story here: http://babblingbrooks.blogspot.com/2005/03/can-we-correct-record-please.html. The implication was that those numbers were sourced from within DND.
Given Thorne’s level of accuracy on other stories relating to the military, I’d be inclined to trust his sourcing on this.
January 13th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Good follow up Damian.
January 13th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Hi Damian, I wasn’t working on inflation either. I think that comparison of constant dollars is a bit of a herring anyway. I would rather work on the percentage of program spending. If viewed that way it is even worse. Check out the increase in program spending and transfers in the latest budget here :
http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr/2005/afr05_1e.html#Total
Net program expenses 03/04 141,355 04/05 162,672
Defence 03/04 12,449 04/05 13,924
These figures show defence spenidng at 8.8% of program spending for 03/04 and 8.5% in 04/05.
The 1999/2000 expenditures show Net Program Expenses at $111,763 and defence spending at $10,201. That would be 9.1%. The Liberal party has always maintained that it would spend more on defence if it could but there was never enough. It is all a matter of spending priorities though. Defence has suffered under the Liberal governments of Jean Cretien and Paul Martin, truth.