And I want to work for them this summer...

Politics alert!

In February, at the urging of the graduate student society, I did something I've never done before.

That's right, I emailed the prime minister. Ha! As if that's going to do any good, but I thought I might as well exercise my civic right in these troubled times.

I wrote an eloquent (ha!) email voicing my concerns over provisions for $87mil towards graduate scholarhips in the budget of which the extra 20% allocated for Social Science and Humanities grants would go entirely to business students. Outrageous! More business students sitting around arguing about the economy will not improve it, I say! Anyway, I sent off the email, and received a reply a week or perhaps more later from an aide saying my concerns had been forwarded to the minister in charge of the portfolio. They said it was Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources Development etc etc whatever they call it these days, and I paid it no more attention.

Today I received an email from this particular minister's office saying that my concerns about scholarship money had been forwarded once more, this time to Tony Clement, the Industry Minister, and apparently the one who is actually responsible for the portfolio.

It appears nobody is quite sure who is doing what in this government. I certainly had no clue SSHRC fell under Industry until I looked it up today after receiving that unexpected email. Turns out Diane Finley's aides have some idea of what's going on, thought it's not clear why they sat on it for a month. I can only hope they had to sort through a deluge of concerned emails about Canadian Graduate Scholarships that got mistakenly sent to them by some loser in the PM's office.

Actually, I don't hope that. Not that it would do any good, since the budget passed and is rushing through all levels without much modification.

But my little voice got stalled in the ether for over a month due to the PMO's total incompetence. Help, help I'm being oppressed! I almost think it must have been intentional - misdirect the complaint and claim it never happened. ;)