Let’s get the good news out of the way first. The unilateral elimination of all remaining tariffs on production inputs in today’s budget is terrific public policy, a shot in the arm for Canada’s manufacturers, and a timely example to the rest of the world. It will lower costs, save on paperwork, and improve productivity. It will make Canada the G20’s first tariff-free zone, and as such is likely to prove an attractive incentive to locate a plant here.

End of good news.

So here is how budget day will work at Macleans.ca.

At this very moment, our Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, John Geddes and Philippe Gohier are sequestered in a downtown Ottawa conference room with various other journalists, bureaucrats and government officials, scrutinizing at length the federal budget. They will be freed at 4pm and will burst forth with all sorts of news and analysis. So you have only to hold your breath for another three hours.

I, possessing only rudimentary math skills, am not in the lock-up and am instead skipping joyfully around the capital, delighting in the freedom of movement that is allowed when most everyone else is being held captive. I’ll be in the House for Question Period at 2pm, in the foyer for scrums afterward and then back in my seat for the budget speech by Jim Flaherty at 4pm. Some sort of written account will follow.

A mere 58 minutes. That’s it. That’s all.

We were promised an hour, perhaps as much as an hour and a half. And yet here was Michaëlle Jean, solemnly invoking “Divine Providence” at precisely 3:47pm this afternoon, just about 58 minutes after she welcomed “honourable senators, members of the House of Commons, ladies and gentlemen.”

Some 6,000 words passed in between, each delivered in that breathy, deliberate way of the Governor General’s. But this was not quite the excruciating test of endurance for speaker and listener alike, not nearly the epic we were told to expect. Once more we are faced with a government full of ambition and promise, unable to ultimately deliver. Once again we see the danger of unrestrained hope. Continue…

For a sneak preview of this year’s budget, please consult last year’s budget.

The upcoming federal budget will contain no new spending measures or tax cuts beyond what the Harper government has announced already in its plan to stimulate the economy, says a senior government official. The budget, to be tabled on March 4, will simply implement the second year of the “economic action plan,” the stimulus package unveiled in last year’s budget, the official told reporters in a briefing Monday.

The Star finds a government official who suggests there will indeed be spending cuts, but another government official—conceivably the same one cited by Canwest—speaks only to a reduction in the rate of growth of government spending. Economists, wordsmiths and fans of financial terminology can debate the difference, if any, between those two statements.

No word yet on whether the government, entering into an era of restraint, will cut down on the number of unnamed officials it employs.

The prepared text of the Prime Minister’s speech in Davos today.

“It’s great to be here in Davos and to have this opportunity to contribute to your discussions on some of the vital issues confronting the world today.  Some of them are complex and they may, at times, seem abstract.  But for ordinary men and women everywhere, the substance of what we talk about here translates into simple realities like a home, food on the table, or a better life for their children.  So, it’s an important debate that we’re delighted to be part of.

Continue…

Glen Pearson leaves for Africa with much on his mind.

Like many reading this blog, I’ve done a lot of thinking over the present prorogation of Parliament and I presume I’m in the vanguard of those who are deeply troubled by the development. Yet in so many ways, Canada has been prorogued for years. Suspending or cancelling our international commitment to Africa is bad enough, but where also is our commitment to battling climate change, or how could we spend so abundantly with no plan in place for how we pay it off? While our Aboriginal communities still suffer from our prorogation of the human spirit, this country yet refuses to sign the UN’s Declaration of Aboriginal Rights. We went AWOL on medical isotopes and have done absolutely nothing to deal with the emerging healthcare crisis already at our doorstep. Child poverty is roughly what it was 20 years ago and we still haven’t figured out what our development plans look like as we leave Afghanistan.

Heck, this country has been in prorogation for a long time, enough that it might be time to worry that it’s becoming part of our collective DNA. In our inability and lack of maturity surrounding minority government, we take the kind of incremental steps that lead to … nothing. Parliamentarians sit fewer days in the House than ever before and these significant issues lie in wait for someone to use power for anything other than the desire to hold on to it.

The Globe, Star, Canwest, Sun, CBC, Reuters and Bloomberg write-up various points from the Prime Minister’s conversation with Peter Mansbridge.

Video of the interview is available, in two parts, here and here.