Cynicism, part 815 in a series
Posted by Dalton48 on 21 Jan 2007 at 01:28 pm | Tagged as: Current Events
So Canada’s New Government (getting things done — for everyone) has announced some “new” initiatives that will give homeowners grants for retrofitting their homes. This new ecoENERGY (why is the combination of lower- and upper-case letters so appealing to governments?) retrofit program will provide grants of about $1000 for homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient. Total cost: $220 million over four years, plus another $80 million over 4 years for initiatives involving businesses and builders.
Sound familiar? Why, yes. This would be the revived Energuide program, which Gigantic Hound has some familiarity with, and which was cancelled by Canada’s New Government in May 2006. Budget 2005 — admittedly, the budget that promised everything to everyone — pledged $225 million more to the popular $40 million program over 5 years.
So CNG cancelled the program, did f-all to encourage energy efficiency for almost a year, and starting in April will re-start the program from scratch. No doubt there will be a new logo commissioned to go with the kicky new name. Talk about efficiency!
To be clear, I have no issue with CNG seeing the light on energy efficiency, whatever has caused the change in sentiment. It’s good they’re restoring this program. What I object to is the extreme cynicism of announcing as a new program the restoration of one that existed until eight months ago, spending $20,000 on a media event (at the Metro Home Show) to tell me about it, and choosing Sunday (when newsrooms are lightly staffed, and willing to report almost anything), to do it. Voters, no matter what their political stripe, should be insulted by this. I know I am.
Well, on the positive side, apparently they’re familiar with the concept of recycling…
(I fixed your “a” tags, btw. In closing tags the slash bit goes before the “a”.)
Hum, I wonder if this need to buy votes will result in the CNG rethinking their axed pledge to the Opera House?
I guess with the current warming trend, it will be a while before Heck freezes over.
I’m not surprised this happened in January – it was the deadline for the cancelled program to actually run out of money and expire. This is why we had that fridge magnet for the longest time reminding us of the January 2007 deadline.
Is there a homeowners’ guide anywhere? We started out with (i think ) one point out of a possible 100, and have to get up to 40 for any kind of subsidy, under the old rules. What the new rules say is anybody’s guess.
Thanks, MCP…
No, this is a classic case of announce, then develop, so there’s no guide for households, though there is a media backgrounder. Details in April, by which time the new logo should be ready.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the new, improved version required homeowners to deal with particular CNG-approved contractors.
[...] behaviour! It’s the home retrofit program that the Liberals ran, the Conservatives killed, the Conservatives reintroduced, and that the Throne Speech suggests we can all look forward to being announced all over again, [...]