Ottawa

Horse-Something

Taxpayers pay to produce Horse-Canada so that the people who do read Horse-Canada don’t have to? Sigh.

Sigh.

The Government of Canada Invests in Horse-Canada Magazine

AURORA, ONTARIO – On behalf of the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, Lois Brown, Member of Parliament (Newmarket–Aurora) today announced funding for Horse-Canada magazine.

Horse-Canada magazine celebrates the joy of owning and caring for horses by contributing to the improvement of horse care and horse management in Canada. The magazine is published five times a year and is distributed across the country. The funds will contribute to the creation of Horse-Canada magazine’s content through Canadian writing, designing, editing, and photography services.

“Our Government is proud to help magazines that speak to Canadians’ interests and passions,” said Minister Moore. “Horse-Canada magazine is an excellent source of information for horse-lovers throughout Canada.”

“I am proud to recognize Canadian Horse Publications as a superb example of a Canadian publisher that produces many high-quality publications serving Canada’s large equestrian industry and enthusiast population,” said Ms. Brown.

“We’re very pleased to receive financial support from the Government of Canada in recognition of Horse Publications Group’s commitment to producing top-class magazines by and for Canadians,” said Jennifer Anstey, Publisher.

[h/t Eye on the Hill – Feds invest in Horse-Canada Magazine]

So the people who don’t read Horse-Canada, which would be almost everyone, will pay to produce five issues a year of Horse-Canada so that the people who do read Horse-Canada don’t have to. This achieves the important public policy goal of … diddlysquat. The people who don’t read Horse Canada get no benefit because others do. The people who do read Horse-Canada are perfectly capable of paying for it themselves. There is no public good argument for subsidy. (Oh, I know: We’re telling ourselves our own stories. About horses.)

Repeat this exercise hundreds of thousands of times and you have the Public Accounts of Canada. Now repeat several hundred thousand more times for the provinces. And again for the municipalities — three levels of government furiously passing money from one group of taxpayers to another and back again, at all points pretending that the money does not come from taxpayers, but from themselves (“The Government of Canada invests in…”)

This particular installment is brought to you by three things:

1) The willingness of publishers such as Jennifer Anstey to take other people’s money — and to say nice things about the government that gave it to her.

2) The willingness of MPs like Lois Brown to take part in this charade, rather than to do her job as a Member of Parliament — as a watchdog on government spending, not a distributor of it — which is precisely to blow the whistle on this kind of thing.

3) The utter shamelessness of ministers like James Moore, who make their living dishing out money that isn’t theirs to people who aren’t entitled to it, in return for thanks they don’t deserve.

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