Mr. Harper is supposed to have aroused ill-feeling in the [Maritime] region with comments he made in May, 2002, and since they're still relevant, perhaps we should recall exactly what he said, speaking of the need for a "can-do" federal government that could liberate the Atlantic provinces' economic energy:

***"I think in Atlantic Canada, because of what happened in the decades following Confederation ... there is a culture of defeat that we have to overcome. It's the idea that we just have to go along, we can't change it, things won't change. I think that's a sad part, a sad reality the traditional parties have bred in parts of Atlantic Canada ... Traditional regional development programs are not very successful. They grossly distort the market and they not only fail to develop a lot of profitable enterprises, but over a long period of time, they have detrimental effects on potential opportunities."***

Colby Cosh, himself, points out what is obvious to him, that "the multi-decade use of unemployment insurance as a regional transfer is logically anomalous and morally repellent. " and, what is self-evident concerning ACOA:

***[Research] by the C.D. Howe Institute has since confirmed: that the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has been used as a political slush fund for the benefit of the party in power, its cash outflow increasing at the end of election cycles and going disproportionately to ridings held narrowly by the Liberals***

Further along, Cosh adds:

***[The] appetite for reform in Atlantic Canada is superseded by the hunger for pork. But any politician who wishes to speak the truth about Atlantic Canada -- which is that the region has lived willingly in an abusive relationship with 40 years of open-handed governments -- must follow a fine line between rudeness and condescension. A person of good conscience who wishes to tackle real problems has to risk erring on the side of the former. It's called courage.***