40th Canadian parliament

Yesterday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the long awaited budget. The topic of what would be in the budget and how the Liberal Party would react to it have been in debate since Governor General Michaëlle Jean prorogued parliament last December. With the economy still sinking slowly into a constantly deepening abyss, the question on the minds of Canadians is what is Michael Ignatieff is going to do with the budget that King Stephen has handed him. Before I get into his options I'll just go into some of the details surrounding the budget.

Does anyone else think that Jim Flaherty's budget sounded well, very liberal? They did not balance their books to create a surplus.They actually presented a budget that made sense (well except for the tax cuts). They went against every instinct that the conservatives have shown over the years (again except for the tax cuts) and have a budget that looks like the one a liberal government would present.

The one thing that this budget is above all else is political. The Tories know that the NDP and BQ will vote against the budget because they have lost confidence in the house of commons. They also know that if the liberals decide to vote against them they would lose power to the coalition or force an election.

Because of these two important facts the Tories know that the Canadian public would be turned off by a regular Tory budget in these hard economic times because they had a chance to listen to the opposition and didn't. So instead of making a true Tory budget, they went with a budget that would please everyone (or almost everyone). This way they would have a better chance of staying in power.

So right now Michael Ignatieff has a couple of options. He can support the budget and give the liberal party a chance to recover before an election. He can vote the Torries down and hope that the canadian public will understand why he did it during an election. He can go to the Governor General and ask her to give the Coalition a chance to govern. Or he can ask the Tories to make some ammendmants to their budget before giving support. All of these options could pay off big for the liberals, but they could also send Iggy's popularity down the toilet. All i can hope for is that this whole game of poiltical football ends so we can get down to the buisness of helping Canadiens.