Can They Keep Him?

Peter MacKay goes to Afghanistan.

But seriously folks: if losing fifteen soldiers over three years is enough to convince people to pull out of Afghanistan, imagine how quickly we would have folded against the Germans in World War I with this attitude, when we were losing fifteen soldiers in three seconds.

Upper House, Lower Debate

There's no more effective way for the media to cast aspersions on any plan than calling it "American-style." From health care reform to beer brewing, the very term raises all sorts of negative connotations, from inferior quality to rapacious profiteering to gaudy excess to chest-thumping jingoism.

So no doubt the idea of fixed six-year staggered terms for Senators is filling all the right-minded Canadians' hearts with dread, regardless of the merits or weaknesses of the idea, simply because that is what the Americans do:

Conservative policy planners are examining the possibility of American-style Senate elections, where voters cast ballots for certain Senators on one six-year cycle, and other senators on a second six-year cycle.

The model, also used in Australia's Senate, would ensure a regular influx of fresh blood into the upper chamber since all elected senators would be required to step down after six years in office.

A senior government source familiar with the work said the idea of staggered elections is just one of the many elements of a Senate reform package expected to be put forward this fall, and will likely include at least the promise of future constitutional change.

Calling it "Australian-style" Senate reform wouldn't strike the same fear in those who live by and will die by the status quo.

And if anything, it would be far less like the U.S. Senate by imposing maximum age and term limits.

And we still have not heard about the powers of this elected Senate.

Nonetheless, do not expect debate to proceed in a rational manner. As badly flawed and increasingly unworkable our current constitutional arrangements are, the governing classes have tacitly agreed that they cannot be touched, though the country fall, for fear of unleashing even worse evils.

Watch for the media to rouse itself in defence of a principle already anachronistic at the time of Confederation: the need for an appointed upper house of learned and illustrious citizens to cool the rebellious passions of the masses' representatives in the lower house.

The Family Compact will not go down without a fight on this issue.

Source: Edmonton Journal

Kennedy Slums It In Montreal

The dearth of Liberal leadership candidates from Quebec and glut of same from Toronto is so embarrassing to the party that one of them is moving there to balance things out:

Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy is moving from Toronto to Quebec for part of the campaign in a bid to show he's serious about reconnecting with the province.

"We look forward to doing that as a way to allow me to do a lot more grassroots things in Quebec," says Kennedy, who resigned his post as Ontario's education minister to seek the top job in the federal Liberal party.

What an empty symbolic gesture. Quebecois will not warm to the party again just because one of the candidates has condescended to rent a house in Montreal for the duration of the leadership contest. Whatever the result, Kennedy will flit back to Toronto at the end of the race.

But this gesture will have the intended effect on its real audience: the Toronto elites who still believe in Trudeau's bilingual, multicultural paradise. Kennedy at least shows that he cares. And that's enough for them.

Source: Toronto Star

Back From The Dead

Reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated, in more ways than one:

The incumbent Liberal Premier has a knack for slipping on political banana peels. His two rivals in the opposition are younger men trying to shake off their image as callow, uninspiring party leaders.

As a result, the buzz this weekend in Quebec was a poll showing that former Parti Québécois premier Lucien Bouchard would handily win the next election if he returned to politics for a right-wing party such as Mario Dumont's Action démocratique du Québec.

A reflection of Quebeckers' lack of enthusiasm for their politicians, the talk about Mr. Bouchard underlines the fickleness of a population weighing its options in a post-sponsorship scandal context.

"People are ready to look elsewhere," said University of Sherbrooke political scientist Jean-Herman Guay. "The electorate is volatile, so much so that it is a purely hypothetical party that's catching on."

Mr. Dumont told reporters this weekend he wouldn't publicly ask Mr. Bouchard to step out of his "devoir de reserve," the discretion expected of ex-premiers.

However, in the same breath, Mr. Dumont said he wanted to build "a coalition for change, a coalition that will be wide open to all Quebec leaders who would want to join in."

....

Yesterday, he justified his constitutional gambit by saying that "there is a new horizon of openness" with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

Mr. Harper is doing well in Quebec. A Léger Marketing poll had 70 per cent of Quebec respondents being satisfied with his performance. And a CROP poll had Conservative support in Quebec at 34 per cent, neck and neck with 31 per cent for the Bloc Québécois.

"It'll probably be easier for Stephen Harper to get 30 more seats in Quebec than gaining 30 more seats in Ontario," Prof. Guay, explaining why Mr. Harper is courting Quebeckers assiduously and why both Mr. Dumont and Premier Jean Charest are trying to ride the Prime Minister's coattails.

Lucien Bouchard's silent abandonment of the separatist cause has not gone unnoticed in Quebec; the man whose efforts and charisma came within about 50,000 votes of making him the first president of an independent Quebec now can't be bothered to say a kind word for the cause at all, let alone the Bloc Quebecois that he founded.

If he's returning to his Conservative origins, he will have come full circle, but Quebec will have turned 180 degrees from statism and separatism to conservatism and federalism.

Perhaps, then, the 1995 referendum really was the high water mark for the separatist cause.

Source: Globe and Mail

420

I have never understood the religious devotion with which marijuana users and activists have taken up their cause.

Even as speakeasies and rumrunners flourished during the dark days of Prohibition, thousands of drunkards, barflies and lounge lizards did not march en masse in the streets demanding its repeal, nor did they claim any greater medical, moral or spiritual benefits to the consumption of alcohol other than that they enjoyed a drink or two now and then.

Yet thousands of potheads can be roused from their stupor around the world to demonstrate in favour of legalizing marijuana, many of them right here in Toronto,where they have just concluded the stoners' Holy Week.

What is it about marijuana that can generate such fanatical commitment from its users, to the point that their lives revolve around it? Surely simple pleasure, or even addiction, cannot explain it.

One fails to see the same dedication from the users of opium, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin or any other such recreational narcotic, at least from users who have not been completely wrecked by using it.

What elevates this drug, above all other drugs, to a good in itself?

Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Mo

As Dr. Carolyn Bennett so brilliantly opined earlier this week, children who don't go to daycare will grow up to become criminals.

But if you send them to daycare, you'll be dumping them into a boiling cauldron of racial antagonism, according to this Daily Telegraph report:

To stop prejudice from developing while children are still three years old, staff need to ensure that different racial groups "play together right from day one", according to Herman Ouseley, the former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality.

Nursery staff should "discourage separate play" and "help children to unlearn any racist attitudes and behaviour they may have already learnt", said Lord Ouseley.

"It is important to consider whether patterns of play are consistently based on racial or cultural grounds," he writes in the latest issue of the journal Race Equality Teaching.

"If, for example, Muslim children nearly always play together and seldom play with other children, the question needs to be asked, 'Is there a reason for it that may relate to culture? Or apprehension? Or prejudice?'," said Lord Ouseley, the author of an influential report on the 2001 Bradford riots.

The recommendation that staff intervene to ensure that children mix goes further than current thinking and guidance, which concentrates on making sure nurseries cater to all ethnic groups.

Such brilliant insights into the preschoolers' minds! If white or black children prefer to play with others of their own colour, who cares? At that age, racial prejudice is hardly a great motivating factor, and I doubt they can understand the concept.

Let children play with whom they will. Don't project adult attitudes on to their behaviours.

Dalton Jilted

Dalton McGuinty is all upset that Stephen Harper has not shown him, and by extension Ontario, the proper deference expected towards the centre of the universe:

Harper refused to be seen publicly with McGuinty before or after the two met for their first one-on-one in a Toronto hotel room Thursday evening, and raised eyebrows minutes later with his partisan introduction of Tory.

The Liberal premier chose his words carefully Friday as he responded to the comments by the new Conservative prime minister.

"I don't think it's helpful when it comes to establishing a good, positive, working relationship between the people's representative - duly elected - and the prime minister of Canada," McGuinty said. "But I will continue to make efforts to reach out to the prime minister."

However, Ontario Education Minister Sandra Pupatello wasn't nearly as diplomatic as her boss Friday in criticizing Harper's actions at the Conservative fundraiser.

"I think it is total inexperience on the part of the prime minister," Pupatello said in an interview. "He may really not realize how rude his behaviour is being interpreted, never mind by us, but by the people of Ontario."

Tory said Friday that people should not be surprised that a Conservative prime minister would publicly say he expects a provincial Conservative leader to become the next premier.

"I really think it is a bit galling for Mr. McGuinty, the lead attack dog on the Harper government on every issue every day, now to try and pass himself off as some sort of a defenceless little puppy," Tory said.

What's worse, he's wounding sensitive Ontario feelings by spending too much time with and saying too many nice things about Jean Charest and Quebec:

At a dinner two weeks ago to honour that former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, both Mr. Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest were among the invited speakers.

Mr. Charest joked that he had told his wife he would be meeting the Prime Minister. "What, again?" she had replied.

Mr. Charest then deadpanned that he hoped Dalton McGuinty wasn't watching.

It's unclear whether Mr. McGuinty was, but he was definitely watching on Thursday night when Mr. Harper gave him short shrift at their first meeting. The hastily arranged encounter took place in a hotel, adjacent to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where Mr. Harper would later attend an evening for provincial Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

....

Since Mr. Harper took office he has met on four separate occasions with the Quebec Premier.

By contrast, at the Prime Minister's one meeting with Mr. McGuinty, Ontario Liberals say, Mr. Harper behaved rudely to their Premier. Moreover, they argue the Prime Minister appears to be pitting two provinces against each other.

This sort of whining like a jilted schoolgirl to the press won't do McGuinty any favours in either the Harper government's eyes or the public's.

But it is reflective of the Ontario attitude that in a federation of equals, it is the most equal of all.

Eight Is Enough

After much consideration over drinks at the airport lounge, John McCallum has decided that he can't storm Vichy Ridge after all:

The Liberal finance critic had been mulling over a bid to run to replace former Liberal leader Paul Martin, but decided against it, saying he would throw his support behind front-running candidate Michael Ignatieff instead.

During a press conference in Toronto, Mr. McCallum said Mr. Ignatieff has demonstrated both the capacity and commitment to rebuild Liberal support in Quebec.

"I think I could have run a credible campaign, but I believe that Michael Ignatieff's vision is my vision," Mr. McCallum said. "I think this has to go beyond personal ambitions."

Granted, the Liberals' apparent bench strength in the GTA has several weak spots. There are no leadership candidates from Mississauga, Scarborough, Brampton or Markham; McCallum would have ensured representation from Markham.

Without a candidate from all the major GTA centres, the Liberals' claim to being the natural governing party of Canada has become quite weak indeed.

It doesn't matter how well a candidate might do in backwaters such as Alberta or Quebec; if he can't win Toronto, he's nobody!

Source: Globe and Mail

SCC: BYOB, DUI, DOA, SOL

The Supreme Court has closed the floodgates of litigation firmly shut behind what might have otherwise become a raging torrent of lawsuits against social hosts whose drunken guests go out and kill or injure someone on the highway after the party:

Canadians are not responsible for making sure their house guests don't drive away drunk, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

The top court ruled that Zoe Childs cannot sue the people who let a known drunk drive away from their party in Ottawa on Jan. 1, 1999.

Childs was left paralyzed when Desmond Desormeaux slammed his car into the one she was riding in, killing her boyfriend, Derek Dupre.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against her suit for damages.

....

The court said that when it comes to monitoring a person's drinking, hosts of home parties are not bound by the same rules as commercial establishments, such as bars and restaurants.

"While, in the commercial context, it is reasonable to expect that the provider will act to protect the public interest, the same cannot be said of the social host," the decision stated.

It went on to note that a social host "neither undertakes nor is expected to monitor the conduct of guests on behalf of the public."

A reasonable decision under the circumstances, and one which recognizes the difference between commercial and social hosts.

Commercial hosts can pass the costs of CGL insurance and training servers and bouncers down to their customers; social hosts can't watch everybody, can't usually bounce rowdy drunks themselves, and would be out of pocket entirely because occupier's insurance wouldn't cover them for what someone else did on the highway.

And one that recognizes personal responsibility--no one forces drunk drivers to drink or drive. Theirs alone is the blame.

Cold comfort for Ms. Childs, but at least if your cousin or neighbour has one too many at the backyard barbecue, you won't be expected to watch him like a hawk or wrestle his keys away.

Source: CBC

Gun Crime: Tories Shoot Back

As Carolyn Bennett so thoughtfully informed us yesterday, parents who are irresponsible enough to raise their children at home without the training and wisdom that only expert and credentialed state-run and state-subsidized daycare providers can offer will be raising the next generation of criminals.

(But not, of course, parents such as Dr. Bennett and most of her constituents in St. Paul's. They could afford nannies to do the job so that their offspring did not have to be contaminated by contact with lower-class offspring in the same daycares--such as their nannies' own children.)

Equally thoughtfully, the Conservative government is providing more opportunity for these improperly raised children to find suitable prison spaces as they get older:

The Conservatives introduced a pair of crime bills yesterday that will put an estimated 4,000 more people in jail, even though they watered down their election promises for tougher gun sentences.

The two bills, one to stiffen mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes and another to eliminate conditional sentences such as house arrest for a long list of crimes, were the first parts of a larger, get-tough-on-crime package promised in the recent election campaign.

Federal justice officials estimate the gun-sentence bill will add 300 to 400 people to the federal prison population, an increase of about 3 per cent. And they estimated as many as 3,800 people a year who would get conditional sentences now will probably go to provincial jail instead -- 15 to 20 per cent more inmates

....

Mr. Day said the federal government will set aside $225-million to $245-million over five years to build new federal prisons. But critics said the operating costs will be far higher, and provincial jails and courts will need much more money.

....

The federal gun-sentence bill was, in fact, a softening of the Conservatives' election promise for far tougher gun sentences. It was watered down so the law could survive a Charter of Rights challenge in the courts and get political support in the minority Parliament.

They had promised to extend most one-year minimums for crimes such as gun trafficking to five years, and that existing four-year minimums for serious gun crimes such as murder or kidnapping using a gun would be extended to 10 years. But they introduced a more complicated scheme that applies lighter sentences except for repeat offences.

Minimum sentences for eight serious gun crimes, such as kidnapping using a gun, will be toughened from four years to five for a first offence -- but only if the crime is committed using a restricted weapon such as a handgun, or by someone linked to organized crime.

Only someone convicted of a serious gun crime three times would face a 10-year minimum sentence.

At first glance, the left's opposition to stiffening sentences for gun crimes appears at odds with its general anti-firearms stance.

But the contradiction is only apparent, not real. The left seems to have an animistic belief in the power of a gun to turn an otherwise peaceful, law-abiding man into a bloodthirsty killer just by touching it. Or even looking at it. Maybe even just thinking about it.

So naturally it would be unjust to give a criminal an increased sentence simply because he used a gun. For it is the gun that controls the man, and not the other way round. It would be like using mental disease or defect to increase a man's criminal responsibility instead of mitigating or eliminating it.

So expect to see stiff opposition to this crime bill just on that basis alone. We shall not see genuine, thoroughgoing penal reform in this government's lifetime, or even our own, but at least this bill is a step in the right direction.

Source: Globe and Mail

Husbands And Wives

Canada's most prominent homosexual interest group has finally admitted, if only in its usual contemptuous manner, that marriage is a unique union of husband and wife:

A gay-rights group says it is "dismayed" with Statistics Canada over the way it treats same-sex couples in the May 16 census, saying the federal agency has complicated the way same-sex couples are counted.

The census form instructs same-sex couples who are married to check the "Other" category at the bottom of the list of relationships, rather than checking the top box marked "Husband or wife."

Egale Canada is urging same-sex married couples to list their relationships as "Husband or wife" rather than "Other;" it assures same-sex couples that Statistics Canada will record either response correctly as a married same-sex couple.

You can usually figure out at first glance who plays the "husband" and "wife" in a homosexual couple; such couplings always try to replicate, if only in parody, the proper man and woman relationship. In a backhanded way, that's a recognition of the true nature of human coupling and its necessity to society. Vice's tribute to virtue, if you will.

Since the courts have forced a redefinition of civil marriage, can forcing a redefinition of husband and wife be far behind? Simply define the terms as representing the performance of the traditional masculine and feminine roles in marriage. If a homosexual couple won't agree or can't decide which is which, courts can take evidence of who does what and decide accordingly.

For obvious reasons, I shall not speculate on what the requisite evidence might be.

Or we could keep the courts from having to perform such nonsense by repealing same-sex "marriage."

The more one claims that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, the further the state reaches in..

Source: Toronto Star

Flash Fry

As we speak, the residents of Prince George are celebrating Hedy Fry's declaration of her candidacy for the Liberal leadership.

Already Liberals are patting themselves on the back for finding a candidate who fits several different categories of tokenism: a token Westerner (well, Vancouver is still technically out west somewhere), a token black woman (to balance out the two white woman also-rans), a token immigrant (one Trinidadian outranks two Italians), with the appropriate ethical baggage (forging prescriptions for lesbian couples) and rapid-fire lip-from-hip-to-foot shooting capability.

The Liberals are now one candidate shy of a dozen, and with John "Vichy" McCallum weighing his options over a few too many at the airport bar, and Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette trying to win votes and recognition outside her immediate family, it will soon be a baker's dozen.

Some would say that having a dozen leadership candidates instead of three (like the Tories did the last time) is a sign of health and strength.

Or it could be a sign of the Liberal Party's confusion after having coronated its last three leaders years in advance about how to actually run a contested leadership campaign.

Or a sign that they're disintegrating into more warring factions than downtown Baghdad.

Or a sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

Taxing Difficulties

Cutting the GST from 7% to 6% will be Stephen Harper's Canada Day gift to all Canadians, but retailers are already saying it's no gift to them:

Diane Brisebois, the president and CE0 of the 40,000-member Retail Council of Canada, said she is "baffled by the fact that the GST reduction will be effective not only on Canada Day, a statutory holiday, but also the fact that it is a Saturday."

"In many jurisdictions, most stores must be closed on July 1 or face fines for operating on a statutory holiday, with some exceptions such as designated tourist areas or where municipal bylaws permit, which creates an unfair playing field and lots of confusion for consumers," she said.

Brisebois added that retailers may not be able to get technology and telecommunications help on the long weekend if problems with the switch to the lower tax rate occur.

Somehow I think businesses will manage just fine. If they staved off the Y2K bug apocalypse, they can work around having to reset their cash registers on a holiday weekend.

Source: Yahoo

If You Can Read This...

...you might be more literate than most Canadians:

Canada is "falling short" in its commitment to the lifelong learning that should thrive from nursery to nursing home, says Paul Cappon, the head of Canadian Council on Learning.

....

But the Council on Learning says the index, to be reported in Ottawa on May 15, will show that Canada suffers "woeful" levels of adult literacy — 42 per cent are semi-literate, Cappon says — and poor levels of on-the-job training, with only 35 per cent of workers offered job-related courses every year.

....

But only 58 per cent of Canadian adults can read well enough to meet most day-to-day requirements, according to a study done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"Canada does very well at graduating students from high school, but there's a big drop-off in adult literacy levels and problem-solving skills — and we need to know why," Cappon said. "This new Composite Learning Index will be one of the tools that can give us answers."

Because education is governed largely by each province, Cappon said Canada has had no national policy on formal schooling or lifelong learning.

This being a Toronto Star article, we all know what the primary hidden subtext is: more federal government involvement in education.

This being a newspaper article, we also know what the secondary hidden subtext is: frighten readers with a compilation of statistics demonstrating that our national literacy rate is on par with much of the Third World.

For the longest time, we could boast of universal literacy, as could every other developed nation--if literacy meant being able to sign one's own name and read basic documents.

Now with a burgeoning immigrant populace actively discouraged from assimilating into the broader Canadian society, and an education system that increasingly prefers using children as guinea pigs for social experimentation instead of actually educating them, it is quite possible that we no longer have universal literacy in Canada's official languages.

It is equally possible, however, that literacy could also be being defined upwards to create a problem where none exists.

You decide.

Bloc Buster Deal

Gilles Duceppe has just freed the Liberal Party from its dilemma: back the budget and look weak, or beat the budget and force an election without a leader, a campaign warchest and a pile of public resentment.

And he's just revived the dead horse of the Tories being in bed with the Bloc.

Not that it much matters right now, but Bill Graham must be secretly relieved to see Duceppe grant the government an effective two-year lease on life by supporting a budget in the hopes of seeing the fiscal imbalance resolved.

The Regrets Of Youth

It has been said that people become more conservative as they get older, youthful naivete replaced with experienced scepticism.

Amd perhaps that is also true in relative terms, if Psycho at Free Dominion is correct in his observation that the federal NDP's current director of operations had been a Communist candidate for Parliament in 1984.

One can only imagine the media outcry if a senior Conservative Party operative had once run for office as a fringe neo-Nazi candidate in his university days.

(Or worse, for the Christian Heritage Party; neo-Nazis now have the saving grace in the left's eyes of being stridently anti-Zionist.)

Quebec Bleu

I have posted at some length regarding my scepticism about the Quebec people's support for federalism and my opinion that support for independence is much more deeply entrenched.

What wine goes best with crow?

The Conservatives are rapidly gaining support in Quebec and are now more popular than the province's separatist party, according to a new poll published on Tuesday.

The CROP poll for La Presse put the Conservatives at 34 percent in Quebec, up from the 25 percent the party won during the January 23 election. The separatist Bloc Quebecois, which a few months ago was flirting with 50 percent backing, dropped to 31 percent from 42 percent on January 23.

....

"Thanks to his attitude, his gestures and his speeches, Mr Harper has clearly succeeded in getting closer to Quebec since the January 23 election," CROP's Claude Gauthier told La Presse.

In retrospect, it looks as though the Bloc's rise in Quebec really was just a temporary protest vote against Liberal corruption, and that there were federalist voters waiting for someone to offer a credible alternative, or for the Liberals to expiate their guilt, whichever came first.

Granted, this is only one poll and the Tories are still enjoying a honeymoon. But it does show that people in Quebec are getting tired of the sterile debate between separatism and centralizing federalism.

Winning 40 seats in Quebec next time is no longer an unrealistic prospect, and with it, majority government.

Would you have believed it possible a year ago?

Source: Yahoo

Hands Not In My Pocket

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has delivered the 2006 budget, and much to the relief of many overburdened Canadian taxpayers, there's a little off just about everybody's load including:

Cutting the GST from 7% to 6% on Canada Day;
Reducing the lowest personal income tax rate from 16% to 15.5%;
Raising the qualifying small business rate income from $300,000 to $400,000;
Tax credits for hiring new apprentices, tools and textbooks;
The $1,200 child care benefit (beer and popcorn for everyone!);
The public transit pass tax credit; etc, etc.

All this and more can be found here.

Thousands of subway-riding Torontonians (like myself) will be very happy to have the Metropass tax credit; I don't know if it will raise ridership, but it might get current passengers to buy passes instead of tokens every week.

And credits for hiring new apprentices makes perfect sense at a time when we're facing shortages of skilled tradesmen.

I'll have more once I've had a further look at the budget papers.

Final Justice?

It's always heartening to see a good political move that is also essentially just and honourable, such as the announcement of the Air India bombing public inquiry.

The two masterminds behind the 1985 bombing that killed 329 people are walking around free because one of their co-conspirators cut himself a plea bargain for testimony against them that he conveniently couldn't remember at trial.

An inquiry will not give them their just deserts, but it will put the mark of their crime on them, forever.

And some measure of justice will finally be done.

Oh, What A Relief It Is!

If the Globe and Mail report is anything to go by, Canadians can expect real tax relief instead of the phantom tax cuts of the past:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will move to establish the fiscal reputation of his new government today with an inaugural federal budget that sources say will include the largest tax-relief package in the recent past.

The first Conservative budget in 13 years is expected to include a reduction in the goods and services tax, breaks for transit riders, aid for tradespeople and a $1,200 annual allowance for parents of children under six years old.

....

Much of the budget will focus on the party's five priorities, which include the GST cut, the daycare allowance, a crackdown on crime, a political accountability act and a pledge to reduce medical waiting times. Sources said the provinces should not expect extra money to fund the health guarantee because the Conservatives believe the system is adequately funded.

The budget's main appeal is expected to be to the Tory political base: middle-class voters in rural and suburban Canada.

Mr. Flaherty's budget will also include a paper outlining how the Tories will tackle a pledge to fix the so-called fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces — a situation the Conservatives promised to remedy by sharing Ottawa's wealth.

The Tories have insisted that they will keep recent campaign promises in their budget. The document is also expected to include:

– A transit-pass tax credit for commuters,

– A federal tax credit on spending of up to $500 for parents of children under 16 years old in sports programs, to provide a break for registration fees and memberships,

– A tax deduction on tools of up to $500 for tradespeople,

– An increase in the threshold for the small-business tax rate and a reduction of the tax rate on small businesses,

– A textbook tax deduction and an exemption for scholarship income,

– An exemption for the first $500,000 of capital gains from taxation for transferring family fishing assets,

– Reinstatement of the corporate income-tax relief cancelled by the Liberals in their deal with the NDP for the 2005 budget.

Even as they champion tax cuts, the Tories are also planning to take a knife to government spending. They'll not only trim Liberal commitments to daycare and climate-change abatement, but also slash future spending growth by about $22.5-billion over five years.

Make no mistake: this is a budget that can double as an election budget, if the opposition all want to press their luck.

Little in the way of promised new spending, except for defence which badly needs it, but plenty of tax relief and a focus on the five priorities.

But expect the budget to pass with perhaps only the NDP to oppose it. The Bloc will support it because of the fiscal imbalance plan, and the Liberals will make all sorts of noise but hold their noses and vote for it because it can't fight an election under the slogan "Three months is time for a change; vote for the leader to be named later!"

More on the budget after it comes out.