All that’s wrong with the Canadian version of the stimulus package can be found in a tiny parkette on Brunswick near Harbord.[rssbreak]
A postage stamp of a park, the Brunswick Parkette is under construction and might very well need the work. That’s not the issue here.
The issue is this: the patch of grass and micro-playground sport a variety of signs – municipal, provincial and federal – trumpeting various economic recovery programs.
But that’s where the trail of information ends.
Each sign has a corresponding URL promising more information. Red herrings all of them.
There’s nothing further available on when construction might end, how much is being spent or what exactly is being done.
Of the three stimulus websites, the federal one, Canada’s Action Plan (actionplan.gc.ca), offers the most detailed description, but even that’s only a bread crumb of info.
Stimulus money will be used for $100,000 worth of “enhancements” to the playground, it says. Whether that means a new see-saw or a longer slide, we just don’t know. (Aside,”Community park to receive playground enhancements” might make a good Onion headline.)
The provincial stimulus tracking site (ontario.ca/infrastructure), now being advertised like a coming attraction before movies, is basically a link to a Google map. For the parkette in question, it gives a miniature pie chart that’s a quarter full, signifying that 25 per cent of work has been completed. So that’s one-fourth of a swing set or what?
The city’s site (toronto.ca/stimulus_fund) doesn’t list the Brunswick Parkette at all and, judging by other stimulus listings, wouldn’t give any information outside of its location anyway.
So what does an effective stimulus-tracking site look like? Though it, too, has its glitches, Barack Obama’s recovery.gov is an impressive role model.
On that site, you can track dollar by dollar the amount of money spent, the amount to come and what has been done so far on a map of the U.S. You can follow a single dollar from the federal government all the way down to the independent contractor completing the construction.
On the state level, the site is mirrored by just adding the state name in the address, like recovery.vermont.gov.
But transparency online costs. The U.S.’s stimulus site is by a Maryland Web firm paid almost $10 million, and upwards of $18 million if the contract continues through 2014.
All three Canadian sites mentioned above were developed in-house, presumably on the cheap. So who gets what stimulus bucks to do what infrastructure work sadly remains a mystery.
joshuae@nowtoronto.com
formspring.me/joshuaerrett
