The Metro Toronto Labor Council is surely right when it says this latest federal budget is part of a secret Tory plan to Americanize Canada. On present form, we'll have $200- billion deficits of our own before long.

It is tempting to praise the budget, on the basis of a really quite brazen lunge for the taxpayer's vitals: $3.7 billion this year, and $7 billion the next. No constituency can be raised for fiscal reform until Canadians are brought face to face with the full cost of current spending.

But whatever inclinations one might feel to charity vanish with a glance at the spending side. For all the talk beforehand of the ''toughest budget in years,'' it must be stressed: there has been no cut in spending.

The $1.5 billion the government calls ''expenditure restraint measures'' are not cuts in present spending: they are only cuts from what the Tories fancied this time last spring they might like to spend in the current fiscal year. In fact, spending is to increase $3.5 billion. That's program spending: $6.4 billion in higher interest costs are added on top of that. Hence the second straight increase in the deficit, to $30.5 billion.

A few alarm bells should be ringing. If this is the best the Tories can do now, fresh from a historic election victory, in the sixth year of expansion, with a leaderless opposition, given the best efforts of the new Expenditure Review Committee and after months of preparing the public for the worst, what are we to expect when election looms, the economy slows, and the opposition is in battle trim?

ELECTORAL FRAUD

The mistake was ever to have billed this as a deficit-reduction budget. It puts the debate on the opposition's terms. All that guff about short-term pain for long- term gain implies something of worth might have to be cut, just as emphasizing the removal of U.S. tariffs as the major gain from free trade suggested our own were something to be cherished.

In fact, there was no need for any special sacrifices to bring the deficit down. All the government had to do was to stop the worst misuse of taxpayers money. Yet the electoral fraud that goes by the name of ''regional development,'' for example, has not only been spared cuts, it is to be increased this term over the already bloated levels of the last. Indeed, the Tories make a boast of it.

With the government's fiscal strategy in tatters, it's time to take names. The word is being put about that Michael Wilson wanted much deeper spending cuts, but was undercut by his cabinet colleagues - especially ol' Brer Sacred Trust. This is the same story we heard after the May, 1985, budget, a disappointment at the time, though the only one to make significant progress on the deficit.

A like tale was told after the utter collapse of will of the 1986 budget, and after the nonevent of the 1987 budget. The 1988 budget, which put the deficit back on the upswing, was even painted as something of a triumph for Wilson, it being an election year and all.

After five years, this good cop/bad cop routine is beginning to lose its persuasive edge. If he is so consistently frustrated in his desire to rescue the nation's finances, why does Wilson stay in there? Has the man no pride? Or, dare I say it, is the whole act a sham? Is Mike Wilson taking a dive?

Deserved or not, his stature in the financial community ought to give Wilson the clout to get what he wants. The resignation in protest of a trusted Finance minister would be a severe blow to the government, perhaps enough to bring it down. That's a desperate weapon. But these are desperate times.

It is hard to believe this cabinet would be the sort steely enough to call his bluff. However painful ministers might find it to constrain their appetite for pork, a full-blown currency crisis would be worse. But if they did - if Wilson is just banging his head against a wall - then the honorable course would still be to resign.

One is left with two options. Either Wilson lacks the guts or the moxy to bull tough, unpopular spending cuts through cabinet, in which case he should resign in favor of someone who does. Or Wilson is as blithe as the rest of his colleagues to the dangers facing the nation. In which case he might as well resign, for all the good he is doing.

The truth is, Wilson could cut spending more if he wished. The ministerial responsibility so much mentioned of late extends to more than lax security arrangements. It covers the budget's contents, too. Just as a minister shouldn't be allowed to get away with blaming his staff for his failures, Wilson's apologists should stop blaming his boss.