Kamloops Thompson Cariboo MP Betty Hinton continued her good will tour this week with a stop in Valemount, where she announced $2 million in funding for a new drinking water system in that community, as well as drinking water system improvements in Loon Lake.
Ms. Hinton made the announcement - which draws the combined funding from the Canada-B.C. Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund (CBCMRIF) - alongside Prince George MLA Shirley Bond.
Betty has been busy making a variety of similar announcements this summer, including $250,000 for School District #73, and $6.6 million for the Kamloops airport expansion. She also made comments this week about efforts to deliver federal dollars to fix "killer" sections of the the Trans Canada Highway between Kamloops and Chase. While that stretch of highway isn't within her riding, she reasoned that her "... constituents use it every single day."
After months of taking it in the ear from political opponents and civic politicians, Ms. Hinton has hit her stride by capitalizing upon the federal budget surplus, which so far this fiscal year (accounting for just April and May) sits at an eye-popping $3.5 billion. Flush with cash, her Conservative colleagues have been announcing everything from icebreakers to the cleanup of contaminated sites to Air India memorials to forest fire prevention to experimental medical research to arts funding.
While Ms. Hinton may not be the only Conservative MP spreading cash and good will, she has certainly been one of the most long-suffering. After spending one term as the Deputy Speaker of the House, Ms. Hinton was rumoured as a candidate for a cabinet position when the Conservatives took the 2006 election; afterwards the Globe and Mail described her as "smart" and "an extremely hard worker". Nevertheless, she wasn't named to cabinet, and until very recently seemed unable to put any big numbers on the board locally.
Given the frosty reception she received from City Council earlier this year when Mayor Terry Lake dismissed her airport funding advice and called her "condescending", Ms. Hinton must now feel somewhat vindicated.
I personally prefer to measure MPs by the influence they are able to exert over caucus in respect to national issues, rather than how much pork they can spill within their ridings. That's not to say we don't deserve airport funding (we do) or infrastructure funding (we do), however we have much more to offer Ottawa in return.
The struggles and values and priorities and opinions of the citizens of Kamloops exist at the core of the middle-Canadian and western-Canadian identities. We expect our governments to play a role in our community, but after existing outside the provincial and federal thought bubble for so many years we're actually fairly independent as individuals (that's a good thing).
The Trans Canada Highway and two national railways that run through this town sometimes remind us of the tenuous connections and broad differences between our own experience, and the experiences of other Canadians in other towns, and other villages, and other cities all along those razor-thin corridors across the country.
Like most Canadians, we're far from perfect. We complain about global warming and rail about herbicides, but would still much rather bitch about water meters and push residential limits out away from the downtown core instead of fully committing to more density and less destruction of grasslands and agriculture.
We rely upon an economy that has experienced a lot of transition, and when all the beetle-kill wood is gone, will experience even more. We've got a hockey team that is constantly under repair. Overall we may be less diverse and more redneck than most big cities, but we still find a way to lead from the front of Canada's social reality, having elected not only the first Chinese mayor in North America (for three terms!), but also the first Status Indian to the House of Commons
I'm ecstatic that Ms. Hinton secured funding for the airport other local projects. If the only thing that mattered at the polls was how much pork she brought home, I'd say she's earned my vote.
But that isn't what really matters, so I don't know why it seems to be the bar against which we've chosen to measure her. We should measure her based upon how well she represents the values and common sense of the citizens of Kamloops Thompson Cariboo, and to what extent those values help shape the nation and its laws.
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