Amateurs at the service of Canadians – The case of the Economic Action Plan’s web site – Part I

Canada’s economy is a modern one, which means that is largely based on the sharing of information, innovation and new technologies, and the Conservatives don’t seem to have understood this basic fact. A sign of this can be found in the dismally old-fashioned first-generation-type, non-ergonomic and opaque web site of the government’s economic Action Plan (http://www.plandaction.gc.ca/eng/index.asp).

When visiting this site, one has to keep in mind that this stimulus package is one of the largest, if not the largest, investment and building projects in Canada's history. In the January 2009 federal budget, 35 billions were promised to help Canada’s economy go through the recession. The Action Plan, necessary as it was, was made possible thanks to taxpayers and businesses money, and has so far created the largest deficit ever registered: the least thing the Conservative government should have done is provide taxpayers and businesses with a state-of-the-art informational and interactive web site worthy of the sacrifice Canadians have made, worthy of Canadians technological know-how.

Most of the Action Plan website is nothing more that a collection of self-serving photos and videos that are put here, there and everywhere to give the impression that Canadians are well served. In the “Real actions” section, for example, Prime Minister Steven Harper himself appears in 5 of the 20 pictures that are shown. Other conservative ministers and MPs are well represented too. For them, ‘real actions’ seem to mean ‘speech and photo ops’. Canadians don’t need these photos.

What they need is to know if their investment is worth the sacrifice that represents the deficit with which they are going to be stuck for years : how many jobs each project have created, how many jobs investment projects in each province, and yes, each riding, have created. The most deceptive section is the so-called interactive map inviting the visitor to ‘find a investment project near you’. There will always be a ‘project near you’, that’s not the question. They want to know if there has been equity in the attribution of funds. They hear about Conservative ridings receiving more funds than others; they want to be able to make up their mind themselves, but their government won’t allow them to know the truth, and the Action Plan is all but helpful in that matter.

Just visit the web site that the American Government has published to inform the American people about its own recovery plan : http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx. You’ll understand what I’m talking about. If you want a picture of President Obama, you’ll have to find elsewhere on the web.