06-23-2019, 10:12 PM
(06-23-2019, 09:46 PM)jeffster Wrote: I thought I had recalled we had the promise from the province first, before the feds, but obviously I was wrong.
Either way, one has to hope that not only meet ridership goals, but actually exceed them. If we can do that, then Phase 2 will be much easier to approve.
I don’t recall the exact timing. But I’m pretty sure that at one point it looked like the combined contribution would pay the entire capital cost.
Part of the problem is that there are different kinds of announcements, and the media do a terrible job of nailing down which kind of announcement is what. Also, governments try to announce the same money as many times as possible, and again the media do a very bad job of making clear that this is happening. They should be much more clear when money is being re-announced, and whether or not there is a legal obligation to actually pay the money. For (hypothetical made up) example, instead of “Minister announces LRT funding”, it should be “Minister announces infrastructure grant will fund LRT” and the article should refer back to the date on which the infrastructure grant program was announced to make clear that the LRT announcement is just saying how some of the money from the previous announcement will be spent. Or instead of “Minister announces LRT funding” maybe it should be “Minister indicates willingness to consider funding LRT” or even “Minister indicates willingness to allocate infrastructure grant program money to LRT”.
These of course are too long for the headline, so maybe the headline should just be “Minister in town for LRT photo-op” and mention in the text of the article what they said about funding.
Probably wouldn’t make any difference in a society in which people don’t even understand the difference between deficit and debt, but it might be a start.