In an announcement that had absolutely no ties whatsoever to the current election campaign, the provincial government today tossed $5.0 million into a variety of efforts that are supposed to reduce the number moose-vehicle accidents in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The provincial government will spend $1.0 million on the traditional make-work job of clearing alders and other scrub from the sides of provincial roads. this time though it will be clearing alders and scrub specifically to reduce moose accidents.
Out of the hundreds of kilometres of paved highway in the province, the government will build protective fencing on 15 of those kilometres as part of an experiment to see if it might keep moose from wandering onto roads where they get hit by cars and trucks. As one perceptive tweet comment had it, though, no one has explained how the government will measure the success of their efforts to reduce something that happens at random.
Kinda makes the experiment silly, but as we noted, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact moose accidents are a political issue the government has ignored until now when it is – purely coincidentally – an election year.
There are other reliable indicators, though.
You can tell the provincial government is serious about this project because they spending the same amount of money cutting down on moose accidents that they spend subsidizing production of the CBC series Republic of Doyle.
You can tell the announcement had nothing to do with an election because both opposition party leaders couldn’t wait to praise the ruling Tories for making this splendid announcement.
- srbp -
