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If only Ed McMahon were still alive to deliver them

Susan Delacourt investigates the government’s use of giant novelty cheques.

There’s an old saying about politicians using your own money to buy your vote. In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government this summer, that adage comes with a visual aid: huge blue cheques emblazoned with the maple leaf logo of the Canadian government, the signature of a benevolent MP and, in some cases, Conservative sloganeering…

The political props were reportedly the brainchild of Transport Minister John Baird when he served as Treasury Board minister in the first year of the Harper government.

Gerard Kennedy suggests that, should you receive such a cheque, you go ahead and try to cash it.

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