As she faced reporters for the first time after announcing herself as a Liberal, Marilyn Gladu seemed to hint that, as an MP on the government side of the House, her riding of Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong would get access to government funding that it was not getting so long as she was a Conservative MP.
“We were a bellwether riding for 52 years before I got elected,” Gladu told reporters Friday in Montreal. “So that means that they always had the advantage of government support. And after 10 years and four elections, even my strong Conservative supporters were saying to me, ‘We like you, you’ve worked hard, but we really need to have that support, we need affordable housing, we have infrastructure needs.’”
But the suggestion that Gladu’s riding — or that any riding not held by a government MP — was missing out on government support is a hard one to prove.
Global News has tracked every spending announcement made by the government since 2011 and, in the current Parliament, has logged 4,131 spending announcements in which a combined $20.5 billion has been allocated to projects in Canada and around the world.
In all those announcements since the 2025 election, there were 19 projects in Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong which received a total of $26.8 million in federal funds.
The average across all 343 ridings is 12 projects worth a combined $30.7 million. So Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong had more federal projects funded than the average, although the combined value of all those projects was below average.
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But what about ridings held by opposition MPs versus ridings held by government MPs? The evidence suggests that, broadly speaking, ridings held by a government MP do not disproportionately benefit from federal funding relative to an opposition riding. Or, to put it another way, ridings held by opposition MPs receive significant federal funds for a significant number of projects despite the fact their MP does not sit on the government benches.
So far in this Parliament, ridings held by Liberal or government MPs have seen 1,739 projects funded worth a combined $7.4 billion. Ridings held by opposition MPs have seen more projects funded — 2,178 — though the combined value of those projects is about half of the value of government-held ridings or $3.8 billion.
This data is drawn from press releases issued by the government to draw attention to the funded projects.
Global News has extracted data from those press releases ever since the 2011 federal election and tracked which ridings got how much in each Parliament. The pattern in the current minority Parliament in which a significant number of projects and funding flows to ridings even if they are not represented by a government MP seems to hold for the two previous minority Parliaments.
During the majority Parliaments from 2011-2019, ridings held by government MPs collectively saw more funds and more funded projects than ridings held by opposition MPs but, by definition, in a majority Parliament, the government holds more than half of all ridings.
As for Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong’s record while Gladu has been an MP, it has been around the middle of the pack relative to all other ridings through all four Parliaments.
Do government ridings get more federal cash? Evidence is mixed
