It's certainly flies in the face of ongoing experience. But in any case, I think it's never a serious issue when the project is one of a large number of projects that arise out of a particular government program. Let's say that if it's in support of small business and a whole series of grants are going to be made on various criteria, it doesn't matter that one of those grants happens to go to the minister's riding, and there's no need to recuse him or her in that respect. But when something is specific to that riding and not, for example, generally available elsewhere, you get into problems of apparent conflict of interest.
I don't think any Canadian objects to the fact that the minister shows up to hand out the cheque; it's understood as part of the culture of political life in the country, and I think that's reasonable. It's not unreasonable. But I think the minister has to be very careful in dealing with projects that relate only to their riding, as opposed to relating to a series of ridings of which theirs might be one.