When are politicians going to learn when to shut up!

I am not a great fan of ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, so I was not too disappointed when the government announced a cut back in its funding.  My problems with ACOA is that it is excessively partisan, blind to outside help and staffed with people who can count money but can't account for it.

There is no doubt that ACOA, some of the folks anyway, can and have been a help to entrepreneurs in getting their businesses off the drawing board.  A case in point is the Ocean Nutrition Canada plant in Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, which produces high quality fish oil products which are exported across the world.  It is also true that ACOA has had some major disasters!

All that aside, let's explore how the federal Minister responsible for ACOA handles the cut back.

"A careful reading of [ACOA's] annual reports will give people a fair idea of what they do, which I don't dismiss as useless, but what I question is the bang for the buck of taxpayers' dollars."

So far, so good.  Minister Valcourt makes a valid point and justifies his decision.  So why didn't he then shut up?  As is the habit of so many holier-than-thou politicians, he just couldn't stop from making a jab in the groin.  And that jab blew the crux of his argument.

Valcourt continued, "I have yet to meet an entrepreneur or business who tells me that the reason for their start up or expansion or trading around the world is because what a regional economic development agency did. Quite to the contrary, it's fully attributable to the entrepreneurial spirit of the individual and the company and the federal or provincial programs in place."

So much for his previous statement "...I don't dismiss [ACOA] as useless...!  If a regional development agency's help is never the reason for business success, then don't just give the agencies a hair cut, chop them up and spit them out.  And that includes the agencies in western Canada, Ontario , Quebec and the Maritimes.