It will serve Prime Minister Stephen Harper right if the Canadians whose votes he is trying to buy through political pork barrelling across the country refuse to stay bought.

After all, by betting almost $1.2 billion of taxpayers’ money in one day last week on local capital improvement projects that flooded into mainly Conservative ridings just before the election call, the Tories have made clear they believe the votes of Canadians can be purchased.

All they’re really arguing over now is the price.

The unseemly spectacle has appropriately been dubbed pork-a-palooza by Sun Parliamentary Bureau Chief David Akin, who counted 84 cheques valued at $839 million sent to Conservative ridings last Thursday alone, shortly before the writ dropped, after which such announcements can no longer be made.

That compares to $68.6 million earmarked for Liberal ridings and $53.8 million in NDP ridings, with the rest going to national programs.

You can find a list of the grants and what they’re ostensibly to be used for in the July 31 entry of Akin's political blog.

Yes, the Liberals used to do the same thing when they were in power from 1993 to 2006, but that’s no excuse.

Harper came into power promising to end Liberal political corruption -- of which pork-barrelling is one component -- not double down on it.

The federal government can have a legitimate role to play in funding capital projects in communities across Canada, such as needed improvements to wastewater treatment, seniors centres, high-speed Internet access, even fixing up Legion Halls and recreational facilities.

But rushing cheques out the door just as the writ is about to be dropped, not on the basis of priority and need but rather mainly on which ridings voted Conservative in the last election, is a disgrace.

It lowers the chances the spending will be done properly and increases the chances the work may not be necessary, if the government was simply trying to find Conservative ridings on which to shower money at the eleventh hour.

What it proves, as do numerous other examples, is that political corruption isn’t a function of being a Conservative or a Liberal, the NDP never having won a federal election up to now. It’s a function of time spent in power.

Inevitably, the leaders and parties who come to power promising to clean up the political corruption of the previous regime -- as Jean Chretien promised when he replaced Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell, and Harper promised when he replaced Chretien and Paul Martin -- do the very things they once blasted their opponents for doing.

Ethics and morality are easy when one is in opposition, removed from the levers of power -- although heaven knows opposition parties these days commit serious breaches as well.

But the true test of a party’s morality comes when it enters government and the seduction of power, patronage and limousines contends with the two most important attributes a political leader can have -- good judgment and common sense.

The point here isn’t that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals don’t have a moral leg to stand on when it comes to attacking the Conservatives on pork-barrelling, given their own history.

It’s that Harper promised to do politics differently, and he isn’t.