OTTAWA - Whatever you say about the country’s Conservative MPs, you can’t say they don’t work hard.

It wasn’t even lunchtime on Friday and already they’d handed out $130 million worth of cheques for everything from new storm sewers in Moncton to a training program for oil sands workers in northern Alberta to “interpretative sign boards” for tourists in rural Newfoundland.

The cynic — that would be me — might also note that among the 13 cheque hand-out announcements that made up that busy Friday morning, every single one of the 130 million dollars being handed out that busy Friday morning will be spent in ridings now held by Conservative MPs.

And almost all of it was going to ridings where the Conservatives are in trouble.

Winnipeg MP Lawrence Toet and New Brunswick MP Robert Goguen led the way and both of those MPs are in some serious danger of losing their seats.

Toet brought home more than $65 million worth of cheques in two separate hand-out announcements. If an election were held today, he’d likely lose his Elmwood-Transcona riding to New Democrat Daniel Blaikie, the son of the riding’s former longtime MP and NDP legend Bill Blaikie.

Goguen represents the federal riding of Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe and he showed up at not one, not two, but three events on Friday where he could take credit for bringing home lots of federal bacon to his riding. Goguen, too, would likely lose his seat, if an election were held today, to Liberal Ginette Petitpas Taylor.

Feeling a little cynical, yet? Well, it didn’t stop there. After lunch, it was time for Conservative MPs to sign more cheques and issue more press releases. Much of this spending may be perfectly legitimate but it’s hard not to conclude that the flurry of announcements and congratulations — only government MPs get to hand out the cheques — is being orchestrated to boost Conservative chances of re-election.

By the end of the day Friday, Sun Media’s exclusive database of these spending announcements had logged more than 50 cheque presentations literally from one end of the country to the other — Tofino, B.C. to Port Blandford, NL — which, when you add up all those cheques, totalled more than $230 million. And that’s just a single day.

But this is the way it’s going to be from here until the election is officially called, likely the day after Labour Day. Until then, government MPs and ministers can travel around the country on the taxpayers’ dime handing out cash from any number of funding programs that have mushroomed since the Harper Conservatives took over.

There’s the Small Communities Fund, the New Horizons for Seniors program, the New Building Canada Plan, the Enhancement of Official Languages Program, and on and on.

The Conservatives have certainly fulfilled their mission of making the federal government smaller — the civil service headcount is actually shrinking and the amount of discretionary spending is falling relative to the size of the economy — but there always seems to be a pot of money for government MPs to tap into when they need their picture on the front page of the local paper.

We saw the prime minister lead the way himself on Thursday during a visit to Quebec City. Right now, the NDP are dominant in Quebec’s capital but internal Conservative polls show that the voters in that capital could be persuaded to vote for the blue team. The Conservatives are dreaming of five or six seats in Quebec’s capital region. That would be a coup.

And so, when Harper showed up there on Thursday he spoke of what a great city Quebec would be to host an NHL expansion team — he’s not wrong on that score! — while his government announced nearly $250 million worth of projects which should be done in time for Canada’s 150th birthday. The Conservatives are hoping that the financial love Harper is showing for Quebec City shows up in great poll results next fall.

As of Sunday, we are 114 days until election day. Given that most Canadians will soon tune out of politics while on summer holiday, that’s not a lot of time for politicians to win new support. Two polls out last week showed that Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats are extending their lead over Harper’s Conservatives. Indeed, in one, the Conservatives were in third place, a shade behind Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

The Conservatives need a little boost to get the attention of voters in key ridings. And there’s nothing like a big fat cheque to do just that.