Conservatives don't do precision ... unless they're working on a voters list

Harper finance minister Jim Flaherty, announced that we will finally be hearing how he plans to manage the nations finances.(Emphasis mine)

The federal budget will be delivered on March 29, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced Wednesday, but it won't contain all the details of the government's planned spending cuts.

All government departments were asked over the last year to find savings amounting to between five and 10 per cent of their budgets, with the ultimate goal of cutting $4 billion in spending annually.

Flaherty told reporters the results of the spending review won't be laid out in detail in the budget.

Why not?

Flaherty can run his own personal finances any way he wants, but he's talking about your money.  Accountants from Beaver Creek to Blackhead are gasping in horror.

For a political party which trumpets themselves as financial and economic wizards, this looks like either a shoddy piece of work or an attempt to paint over rust. A budget full of platitudes is little more than BS. The result is that nobody, (unless you're a member of the Harper elite), can plan anything.

Do you want to be able to plan out your fiscal year for a small business, non-profit, charity or the like? You won't be able to because you'll have no idea where you fit into the financial ministrations of the Flaherty fantasy.

Would you like to plan your retirement finances in detail? You won't be able to because you'll have no idea where you sit and future planning will become impossible.

Harper and Flaherty are going to blind-side you.

They don't do precision. Not for you anyway. But they look after themselves with an obsessive exactitude.

Is There a Chiropractor in the House ? ? ? ?

This vs this.

It appears the current government's spending priorities need a fiscal adjustment . . . .

Man of Steel, Government of Wobbly Bits

On Friday the government adjourned for three months because they have to get started on their barbie bunfests for next fall's election and hell, there's not much going on in Canada right now anyway, right?
Today we learn :

"In a significant policy shift, the Canadian government now believes that telling the country's taxpayers the future cost of the war in Afghanistan would be a threat to national security.... Julie Jansen, the director of the military's access branch, cited "the defence of Canada or any state allied" with it, in justifying the withholding of the figures for the three next fiscal years."

Three years? WTF?

"The military's new secrecy comes after the financial cost of the mission became a major issue for several days during last fall's federal election campaign."

Right. That would the report from our fearless first-ever Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, aka Jennifer's Man o' Steel, the guy who ... well, let's let Jennifer explain :

"Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released his accounting of the true costs of the Afghanistan War , which to nobody's surprise turned out to be somewhat higher than Stephen Harper's guestimate."

Page's first report, released during last fall's election, calculated that the cost of the Afghanistan mission not including military equipment will be about $18.1 billion by 2011.
The second, published shortly before Diamond Jim Flaherty vowed there was absolutely no chance of a deficit in 2009, projected a serious deficit for 2009.

Parliamentary Librarian William Young and House and Senate Speakers Peter Milliken and Noel Kinsella referred to these corrections of the government's mistakes as evidence that Page was "exceeding his mandate".
.
....Wait for it ... don't rush it ...

Parliament wants to gut first-ever Parliamentary Budget Office's independence

"The Joint Library of Parliament Committee's report will gut Canada's first-ever Parliamentary Budget Office of its transparency and independence and is a simple power play to keep Kevin Page in line because he embarrassed the federal Department of Finance, says Parliamentary observers and some MPs.

"What they've done is put Kevin Page in a box, haven't they?" Concordia University professor Jim McLean told The Hill Times last week."The whole idea of the Parliamentary budget officer was to have an arm's length assessment, to have a person and a group backing up that person of highly-qualified people who could make independent assessments and do it in a transparent fashion. Independence and transparency has been stripped out of this, all together."

McLean : "Twelve people in an office embarrassed the thousand thinkers in the Department of Finance and that's where the politics of the whole thing started to work against Kevin Page."

The muzzling of Kevin Page is a bipartisan effort with both Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella and House Speaker Peter Milliken wanting him reined in :

"The parliamentary library operates on a solicitor-client basis. This means any research the library collects for MPs and senators is "privileged" and can be withheld at their request. As an adjunct of the library, Mr. Page's reports would be done for MPs and committees who then can could use the information as they want."

Privileged. Withheld at their request. As they want.

Well it will make a nice change from all that transparency and accountability we've been dealing with lately.
McLean : "the office is going to be buried, very, very deep."
.
Time for Jennifer to fire up her forces again.
.
Cross-posted at Creekside

Man of Steel vs. the Incredible Shrinking Mandate

One of the crowning glories of Steve's original Five Priorities Four Pillars Three Little Pigs Accountability Act was his paean to Canada's Gnu Government transparency - the creation of a Parliamentary Budget Office to provide independent analysis of the national economy and the government's fiscal position.

First budget officer Kevin Page, or "Man of Steel" as Jennifer calls him, has produced two reports since March, both critical of the government.
The first, released during the election, calculated that the cost of the Afghanistan mission not including military equipment will be about $18.1 billion by 2011.
The second, published shortly before Diamond Jim Flaherty vowed there would be absolutely no chance of a deficit next year, projected a deficit for next year.

"In his economic statement, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty projected a budget surplus of $100 million for 2009-10 based on the sale of about $2 billion in assets that he didn't identify."

Mr. Flatulence has since reluctantly come around to Kevin Page's assessment, predicting a $15-billion deficit, only to be promptly contradicted himself by Steve who is now calling for a $20 to $30-billion deficit.

So it won't come as much of a surprise to hear that in the matter of the Department of Finance vs the Parliamentary Budget Office, old Kev has had his budget frozen -( h/t Far and Wide ) - presumably because accurate financial forecasts are a dime a dozen lately in Steve's Fiscal Funhouse.

Actually it's a testament to Mr. Page's perseverence that he has got this far. Both Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella and House Speaker Peter Milliken want him reined in, arguing that the "budget office is simply an extension of the services the Library [of Parliament] already offers."

"The parliamentary library operates on a solicitor-client basis. This means any research the library collects for MPs and senators is "privileged" and can be withheld at their request. As an adjunct of the library, Mr. Page's reports would be done for MPs and committees who then can could use the information as they want."

Privileged. Witheld at their request. As they want.

In 2006 a document at the Library of Parliament outlined the various forms the Parliamentary Budget Office could take and decided it should not be granted the same independence enjoyed by the Auditor General. Evidently no one bothered to inform the Man of Steel.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Stand off at The Woodshed continues...

The Rev. Paperboy is weakening. During the night (east of the International Dateline and west of Greenwich) The Rev. sneaked in a crew and put new vinyl siding on the blog. Yesterday, despite heavy negotiations, The Woodshed continued to be held hostage.

I think with enough pressure we can finish this today. Once we've got The Rev. suitably rummed-up, we can all return to current events... like Brian "With Bells On" Mulroney getting those bells rung for him and crawling back into the sewer system.

Of course, The Rev. is a real "Rev" (has his journeyman preacher ticket) and if he hadn't been holed-up trying to camouflage The Woodshed we could have used him on another mission. It seems Roger Moore dressed up as a conservative Christian minister (they have a uniform?!) and breached the "security" of Ben Stein's piece of "God dun it" drivel.

We need to get The Rev. back on the keyboard. Let's face it, we have Canadian finance minister, Jim "Would I Lie To You" Flaherty, handing out $25 million for the 2010 Olympic torch run. The up side of that is, thanks to Flaherty there will be lots of people with curbside seats. No... they won't have to arrive early to get a good spot. That's where they live.

So, one more day should do it. Save The Rev. from himself.

Flaherty's budget is a snorer.

I agree with Chet. Flaherty's budget is flat. It's also dangerously close to a deficit on the surface and may actually be one now. As was previously pointed out here, Flaherty has been playing with the numbers, noting that selling Crown real-estate and then leasing it back shows revenue in one year and then a 25 year long commitment which is a contingent liability.

Given that Flaherty feels there is a need to further pay down the federal debt, he's given himself next to no wiggle room. If his revenue assumptions fall short, even by a hair's breadth, he's put the country into a deficit position.

The one thing Flaherty seems to be making something of a big deal over is his introduction of a Tax Free Savings Account. It's not a bad idea, but it's hardly worth cheering over.

It is after-tax savings. The contributions, to a limit of $5000 annually, are not tax deferred as for a Registered Retirement Savings Plan. Only the interest on the investment is tax-free. Given the same amount of money placed in RRSP, tax deferred until withdrawn, the RRSP actually makes more money. If you scroll down to the comparison to other investment vehicles in the budget document, the actual funds remaining after taxes is identical. However, most people expect to have a reduced income when they start drawing RRSPs which would mean that the tax advantage is with the RRSP.

There's another issue. How many people actually have $5000 kicking around to store in one of these TFSAs? Most people don't make the maximum allowable RRSP contribution. Unless you have the ability to bank and save that amount of money, this becomes a savings vehicle for a limited number of people and certainly not low-wage earners.

If you were thinking of borrowing some money, banking it in a TFSA and then deducting the loan interest on income taxes, that has been covered too. It's not allowed.

Oh yes, it doesn't start until after 2008. As I said, it's not a bad idea, but it remains to be seen how many Canadians will be able to take advantage of it.

If you have been claiming non-prescription vitamins as a medical expense on your income taxes (and have been in a tugging match with Canada Revenue Agency) you can stop doing it, even if you won a court case on the issue. Despite the argument that taking vitamins reduces your dependency on the medical system, Flaherty is having none of it.

Budget 2008 therefore proposes to clarify the wording for eligible drugs and medications to ensure that those that may be purchased without a prescription remain ineligible.

Overall, Flaherty has taken the federal government right to the horizon of a deficit without a buffer and without a rainy day fund.

The real problem, of course, is that Flaherty cannot be trusted. When a member of the Ontario government he lied and deliberately hid a $6 billion deficit.

So don't let this thing put you to sleep. Given Flaherty's track record, there's a good chance we'll be facing a significant deficit before he ever gets a chance to produce another one.

Deja Vu. We've had this tax cut before. Updated

OK, I've been asked if I am going to comment on the economic update/mini-budget/cynical vote-buying event produced by Flaherty.

My immediate reaction to the question is to say, "No." However, there are a couple of points which I'll make quickly.

First, the income tax cuts announced by Flaherty are virtually the same ones we had before the Conservatives came to power. Rational Reasons has expressed, just about perfectly, all I could say on the matter.

Secondly, (and I am not going to take a lot of time or space to spell this out), cutting the GST another point to make it a 5 percent consumption tax is just about the dumbest and most unfair way to lower taxes I can think of.

The GST is a progressive proportional tax. Those spending the most money pay the most tax. It's cheap to collect and it's virtually self-policing. Anybody with a reasoning mind can see that a value-added sales tax makes eminently more sense than the alternative: regressive income taxes.

By announcing that the GST will be reduced on January 1st, 2008, Flaherty has probably done some not-so-insignificant economic damage to small business in this country as consumers wait until after Christmas to make big-ticket purchases. But then, no one ever accused Flaherty of being very bright.

Notwithstanding that, Flaherty could have seriously slashed income taxes, left the GST alone, increased the basic personal exemption much more significantly and instituted a guaranteed minimum income.

He could have made taxation fairer. Instead he pandered to the base instincts of those who don't and won't understand which taxes hurt them the most.


Update: The Wingnuterer weighs in. Thanks Zorpheous!

O'Connor's strategic lift hobby horse just hobbled the air force

It was a Harper/O'Connor pet project. They were intent on making it happen. Despite the fact that the Canadian Forces had alternatives, they forced heavy strategic lift aircraft on the air force, against the objections of most senior officers, including the Chief of Defence Staff.

Afghanistan is also taking a toll. Already the navy threatened to cancel a scheduled sovereignty patrol due to a budget crunch and the need to up-gun artillery, armour and infantry vehicles deployed with Canadian Forces in Afghanistan has caused other services to suffer.

Now, the real price of those aircraft is about to cross home-plate and the damage to other air force operations is significant. (Emphasis mine)

Canada's air force is looking at cutting the operating and maintenance budgets of some of its frontline aircraft next year in a fiscal pinch that defence insiders blame on new heavy-lift C-17 transport aircraft and the war in Afghanistan.

Senior planners at the 1st Canadian Air Division are studying a proposed 32-per-cent cut in funding for fuel and spare parts for the CF-18s, the C-130 Hercules, C-140 Auroras and the Sea Kings, defence sources told The Canadian Press.

"That's a damn significant hit," said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The staff in Winnipeg, the air force staff, are currently doing the staff checks to find out what the impact will be of those cuts."

The reductions, under consideration for the next budget year, would vary depending upon the fleet, but another defence insider said: "You're basically looking at a one-third cut in operating budget."

The fleets being affected, according to the report, are Canada's fighter interceptor force, medium-lift transport aircraft, long range maritime patrol aircraft and the navy's shipborne helicopters.

An official at National Defence headquarters confirmed the study is underway, but described it as a paper exercise, meant to give commanders a better sense of what is possible.

Yeah... but the truth would have been nice right there. It's not a paper exercise at all. When preparing each year's budget, the past year is the working document. The next year's budget is put together based on known quantities and some assumptions. Rarely does a budget cut, especially one as significant as this, occur without prior communications coming from on high.

The "paper exercise" is actually a planning document and one of the factors when preparing a budget submission is the limit of money to be made available from government. The planners have to work on the assumption that the money made available in the current year is the same or slightly increased for the next year. Other factors are included in budget submission such as increases in size of the air fleet which would be accompanied by an increase in the total operations and maintenance costs of the entire air force.

The "paper exercise" is actually an "options" list presented to departmental finance types and superior commanders. Much simplified it would be something along this line:

Acquisition of four C-17s will increase O&M costs by X million dollars annually based on a normal operating and training tempo. Air Command will require: 1. A significant increase in budget allocations to accommodate the arrival of new aircraft. The remainder of the air fleet will continue to be operated and maintained at current levels; 2. Authority to decommission aircraft and transfer the O&M funding to the C-17 program; 3. Reduce the operating and maintenance tempo of a large portion of the air fleet, transferring savings to the C-17 program.

The reason the air force is discussing a 32 percent cut in funding in the O&M budgets of specific aircraft types is because they have obviously been told that there has been no guarantee that there is any additional funding to meet the needs of the C-17 program or the contingency operations in Afghanistan. No, you may not decommission aircraft. Produce a budget document based on option 3.

In short, the air force has been told it is getting C-17s but no additional funding. And, like the navy, Afghanistan is chewing through the air force's O&M money because it is outside normal program funding.

The number-crunching may go on every year, but it is the size of the proposed cut that has air force insiders worried. "We've been cutting back our national procurement funding for years," said an air force source. "The military is supposed to be about readiness. When you're cutting back your spares, you're cutting back your readiness, your ability to respond."

But, just think what those heavy-lift transports will look like on Steve Harper's world stage.

I can hardly wait for the photo op.

The Conservative answer to the Democratic Deficit

"We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government," said Peter MacKay last month.

And this just verified that Peter MacKay is not just an idiot but also a bald-faced fucking liar.

A Nova Scotia MP has been booted from the Conservative caucus after voting against budget legislation that he says will cost his province as much as a billion dollars.

Bill Casey, who was first elected as an MP in 1988, said he has been trying to convince his party to change the budget to preserve the Atlantic Accord, which keeps Nova Scotia's offshore oil and gas revenues out of the equalization formula. But his fight was unsuccessful and, in the end, he voted against his own government.

The Jurist asks the pertinent question: Where were the rest of the Atlantic Conservative MPs and the Saskatchewan MPs and why did they vote against the best interests of their constituents?

Where were Norman Doyle, Loyola Hearn, Gerald Keddy and Fabian Manning when the future of their constituents was being ripped up with the Atlantic Accord? We already know where Peter MacKay stands.

What is astounding is that Casey voted on behalf of his constituents and believed the previous words of MacKay.

“I'm still a Conservative,” he said. “Peter MacKay said they wouldn't throw anybody out of the caucus if they voted their conscience on (the budget bill). Although the Whip just gave me a little different message a minute ago.”

No, Mr. Casey, you're not a Conservative anymore. If you don't believe me, go read the foaming-at-the-mouth Blogging Tories in the morning. The smart ones will realize that your removal from caucus puts Harper's minority in more jeopardy. But the majority of them will probably call for nothing short of your evisceration.

Not bad. Two promises broken in one vote.

Flaherty's E85 vehicle inclusion smells slightly rotten

Steve has picked up the G&M article which points out that Flaherty favoured vehicles manufactured in the General Motors plant next to his riding by making last minute changes to the budget. The Finance Department, not the Transport Ministry, included two E85 flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) manufactured at the Oshawa GM plant, even though the 85 percent ethanol fuel is not available in most of Canada and the fuel consumption ratings of both cars is far too high to qualify under the "feebate" program in Flaherty's budget.

Government officials privately confirmed that as recently as one week before last Monday's federal budget was finalized, the rebates for fuel-efficient cars did not include vehicles with engines capable of running on E85, a gasoline made up of 85 per cent ethanol.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Globe and Mail that the Finance Department, rather than departments with policy expertise in the area, added two E85 vehicles in the final days.

The two six-cylinder vehicles, the Chevrolet Impala and the Monte Carlo, are produced at the GM plant in Oshawa, a riding narrowly won by the Conservatives in the past two elections. The plant is minutes away from Mr. Flaherty's riding of Whitby-Oshawa, where the local economy is closely linked to the GM plant, with many residents employed at GM or in spin-off jobs tied to the plant.

That's pretty typical conservative politics, although I would say a little blatant. But there's more around this issue.

The budget said that vehicles running on E85 meet the standards required to qualify for $1,000 rebates because they emit 40 per cent less greenhouse gases than if they ran on regular fuel.

However, the federal government is not aware of a single gas station in Canada that sells E85 fuel to the public. As a result, Canadians who buy these cars will have to use regular gas, so there will be no improvements to global warming.

OK, there are two things wrong here. First off, the "feebate" program rewards or penalizes the buyer on the purchase of the vehicle; not its use. In the various jurisdictions around the world where that method of incentives and penalties have been applied, they have not worked. (It's called research and we all know how much attention the Conservatives pay to that, don't we O'Connor).

The figure that E85 FFVs emit 40 percent less greenhouse gases than the same vehicle burning regular fuel is patently false. The latest studies show the best case reduces GGH emissions by 25.5 percent. That's not insignificant, but it's a far cry from the 40 percent claim.

There's another problem. Gallon for gallon, litre for litre, mile for mile and KM for KM, E85 burns less efficiently than gasoline. Compared to an equivalent gasoline burning engine, an E85 FFV suffers a 25 percent reduction in volumetric fuel economy. That means the reduction in the gallon for gallon GGH output is reduced because a FFV uses more fuel to travel the same distance as a gasoline powered vehicle. The GGH emission reduction is actually around 13 percent for the same amount of time the engine is operated.

That's not to say that a shift to FFVs and E85 isn't a good move, but to include E85 burning vehicles in the budget's "feebate" program has nothing to do with significant GGH reduction. It's a typical Conservative environmental program, grabbed out of the air without proper consultation and research. The truth is, the two vehicles built near Flaherty's riding, (Chevolet Impala and Monte Carlo) when burning E85 have a combined city/highway fuel consumption rating of 12.3 litres per hundred kilometers. A Saturn Vue (bigger vehicle, smaller engine) has a rating of 8.2 litres per hundred KM. The gasoline burning Saturn Vue actually emits less volume of greenhouse gases per KM than the E85 burning Impala or Monte Carlo.

So, why were E85 vehicles included? It looks good on the surface, but a turn of the page and a working of the figures suggests they belong closer to the other end of the scale. Smoke and mirrors again.

I won't even start with the feedstock problems associated with E85. That's for another time.

Steve labeled it properly. It's Flaherty pork.

Harper's equalization formula is stealing from somebody else's rice bowl.

Woman at Mile O has a couple of good posts on Flaherty's purchase of Quebec budget.

One of the articles she linked pointed to a very dangerous element in the new equalization formula worked out by Flaherty and Harper. The federal government is now in the property tax game. Not directly, but in the game nonetheless.

Now, when working out equalization payments, property values within a province will also be a part of the formula to determine levels of transfer. In short, what that means is that even if the economy of a province slumps, but property values take their time decreasing, those inflated housing and land prices will prevent a federal transfer from meeting the program requirements of the province.

David Emerson demonstrated that, not only is he a political piece of pond-scum, but he doesn't have a clue how property taxation actually works.

But Emerson said the new formula for sharing wealth with "have-not" provinces is based on firm principles.

"Everybody in the world knows that high real estate prices translate into de facto wealth, which is taxed by local governments amongst others. So I don't know why that wouldn't be part of the calculation."

WRONG!!!

That illuminates the unbelievable stupidity of David Emerson. Property taxes are based on the value of the property alright, but the levy is based on a mill rate. If the actual tax levy rose with the value of the property in British Columbia, nobody would be able to afford the taxes and local government would be swimming in surplus cash.

There is a process which clearly escapes the self-absorbed minds of David Emerson, Steve Harper and Flaherty. All property is assessed for value, local government sets a budget, the amount of money required is determined, the mill rate is established and taxes are paid based on both the property value and the mill rate.

[BC Premier Gordon] Campbell argued last week that the inclusion of property values would probably deny B.C., which won't receive equalization in 2007-08 thanks to a booming economy, future access the program during an economic slump.

"Anyone that says that your property values are in direct relation of your ability to pay doesn't frankly know a lot about what they're talking about," Campbell said last week.

"The fact of the matter is, property values in British Columbia went up by about 24 per cent last year. Peoples' ability to pay did not go up by 24 per cent last year."

I don't normally agree with much of what Gordon Campbell has to offer, but in this instance, he's dead on.

And now, you have the federal government, quite incorrectly, playing a tax game around property values.

1st take. The Budget Speech (And how ignoring a little beetle is going to be expensive)

Call this splitting hairs if you like.

On second thought, it's not splitting hairs at all. Flaherty had plenty of time to put his budget speech together and he blew it. It goes to the same kind of due diligence and care in choosing words that his colleague in the Department of National Defence exercises.

This country is made up of 10 provinces and three territories - from sea to sea to sea. Unless you believe Jim Flaherty.

... we take pride in the spectacular beauty of our country, and aspire to preserve it.

Well, most of it.

From the majestic peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the rugged shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, many of the most beautiful places on earth are in Canada.

No shit! Getthefuckouttahere! Who knew?! I could have sworn British Columbia joined a confederated Canada in 1871, but maybe my freakin' history teacher got it wrong. And the motto A Mari Usque Ad Mare (From Sea To Sea) must be someplace other than a Canada which includes British Columbia because by Flaherty's definition Canada is A Mons Montis Usque Ad Mare (From Mountains To Sea).
(Click on maps for larger image.)









































Maybe it's just that Flaherty, with limited knowledge of anything west of Winnipeg figures that whenever he's seeing a picture of Vancouver, the pictures in the background must be the Rocky Mountains.

Well, Jimbo, BC has a lot of mountain ranges. The Coast Range, the Cascades, the Cassiars, the Skeenas, the Hazeltons, the Omenicas, the Monashees, the Selkirks, the Purcells, the Columbias and, yes, some portions of the Rockies are actually in BC. And that isn't all of them.


Was it a mistake on Flaherty's part?

How fortunate we are to call this vast, beautiful country our home. We must preserve and protect it.

Apparently not. As the little weasel was shoveling money off the back of a truck trying to secure votes in the rest of the country he didn't bother to even acknowledge the worst natural and economic disaster to hit British Columbia, ever.



THAT is a dead pine forest in the BC southern interior. It's WEST of the Rocky Mountains. Any tree that has even a hint of red in it is dead. That makes it an incredible piece of dry fuel. Worse, it doesn't suck up water during the winter thaw, so you can guess where that goes.


This is a close-up.

British Columbia is poised to lose, completely, its pine forestry. Great swaths of the province are red from entire forests of dying pine trees. All due to the Northern Pine Beetle. Before the Conservatives came to power, they were calling it a disaster of the highest magnitude. Now that they form government, those trees are all on the wrong side of the Rockies.

Aside from providing no funding to cities, Flaherty provided nothing to British Columbia to deal with the devastation caused by pine-beetle killed forests. Not a penny.

Flaherty did provide funding to preserve the Great Bear Rainforest. He probably doesn't know where that is. It's really west of the Rockies. If you look on any map prior to 1995 you won't find it. Before that it was just the temperate rainforest of the central BC coast. Most of the trees are reasonably healthy there. The announcement of $30 million to help preserve the temperate rainforest of the central coast is not new. That amount was announced January 21st.

So, while perusing the budget plan to see if there's anything in there that doesn't look like Flaherty was simply trying to buy votes, BC will once again be able to claim "western alienation" by the federal government. A government made up of a party that arose because of so-called "western alienation".

Since the budget only covers from the Rockies to the Atlantic, the Conservatives can feel free to take their 17 MPs and depart. They were all pretty useless anyway, and BC would probably do a lot better without the likes of Stockwell Day and Betty Hinton.

And while we're at it, and Flaherty is groveling to the government of the Province of British Columbia as they angrily rip him to shreds, he might want to consider what those thousands upon thousands of dead trees are about to cause.

The snow pack in the mountains, all of them, including the western slope of the Rockies, is at 125% above normal. In areas where the forest have been clear cut to get rid of the fire hazard there is no more erosion control and no more shade to regulate the snow melt. It will come down fast and hard. Estimates are that 90% more water will flow to the rivers 20 days earlier than normal. In areas where the trees are still standing, the flood levels are expected to be 60% larger, 14 days earlier than usual. Dead trees don't absorb any water at all so, instead of being a natural diversion of millions of gallons of water, it will simply flow to the rivers, and they will probably top the dikes on the lower Fraser River.

So, Flaherty can ignore BC if he wants to. The province is looking at the "mother of all freshets" in the next eight to ten weeks. So, as the guy with the oil filter said: You can pay me now; or you can pay me later.

Let's hope Flaherty put a whole lot of contingency funding in the bank.