May 6 column: The end of the fiscal imbalance

Reading the papers after the budget was a walk through a parallel universe. The Liberals' interim leader, Bill Graham, was quoted denouncing it as Canada's first "neo-conservative" budget, apparently unaware that the budget promised to outspend his own party's election platform by several billion dollars, while such tax cuts as it contained were largely cribbed from the Liberals' 2005 budget. The Ottawa Citizen, meanwhile, gave thanks for "a budget that offers relief from years of Liberal social engineering," before noting, in the next paragraph, that "the budget offers tax incentives to use public transit, to enroll children in organized sports, and to encourage students to excel academically." Yes, it's out with the old Liberal social engineering -- and in with the new Conservative social engineering... [More]