Enough of the Economic Action Plan ads, buy Canadians a Tims instead

Sick of all those ads for the Harper government's Economic Action Plan?  You know what I'm talking about, the never ending spots telling Canadians what a great job the federal government is doing in building prosperity.  Its ironic that their first inclination when the global financial crisis hit was to do nothing.  It took the threat of a budget defeat and a loss of power to get them interested in fighting the recession. 

But fight it they did, taking their cue from the opposition parties they converted to the idea that government can take an active role in steering the economy.  In fact they're absolute zealots to the cause now, borrowing tens of millions of dollars to tell us all about it.

Listening to a CBC radio interview this morning, the cost of this....uhm, Adscam (?) is somewhere between $60 and $65 million. 

Even simple minded idiots like me realize all this advertising is little more than propaganda, designed to help Harper and his merry band win the next election.  All governments engage in this crap.  

What blows is that they're paying for it on the credit card, our credit card.  The feds haven't had a balanced budget for ages now.  Finance minister Jim Flaherty has replaced surplus budgets with massive deficits and has Canada sitting with the largest accumulated federal debt in our history.

So it occurred to me as I was listening to the radio and sipping my Timmy's this morning.  If the government is willing to borrow this kind of cash hoping that I and other Canadians will re-elect them in a couple years, why not skip the ad agencies and just buy Canadians some coffee from Tim Hortons. 

Sixty million will buy a lot of coffee, surely more than enough to give every person of voting age their java fix.  And with it being roll up the rim to win time, there are added spin offs with vehicles, barbeques and prepaid credit cards to be won.

Sure the ad agencies and broadcasters wouldn't like seeing the gravy train come to an end, but that's life.  Media types can vie for another prize in the form of cash for life the next time the Prime Minister starts cramming the Senate with friends for Pam and Mikey to play with.