CEAP, a Wallpaper Budget.

For the week leading up to Flaherty’s Budget the Harper government has been ‘officially’ leaking on a daily basis one major drop at a time of what’s generally in store for us in the CEAP (“Canada’s Economic Action Plan”) 2009 Budget. Whether this is legal or not is debatable, something that Harper always does and does very well as there isn’t enough time these days for people to speak let alone think and to hold peoples’ attention long enough to realize that this buys him more than enough time to hold on to power. He is the master at inflicting ADD syndrome on a national level.

Once again he strives to impress us of being a strong leader in times of crisis; a bold undertaking of historic proportions as Flaherty says in the final sentence, I invite and urge the honourable members to support it, for the good of the country. “

But the general consensus of the punditry was that this was far more a political budget than an economic budget that is what truly is needed and that it is one that gives (depending on the fine print) a little bit of something to pretty much everyone. This is a wallpaper budget only covering the cracks at our peril and precious little that other First World countries are doing with respect to their stimulus programs as a percentage of their GDP and some of them are very bold with Obama showing the greatest leadership.

In this case the Emperor has almost no clothes but only the traditional boots that they bought on Monday the 26th.

But what does Harper care as he succeeded in painting the whole country into a corner again? If Ignatieff votes against the budget Harper has the war chest to fight another election and will paint Iggy out to be irresponsible and not keeping in the spirit of Flaherty’s closing budget line, “for the good of the country “. I think that the GG can be convinced again. So unless Iggy can convince Harper of some big amendments he will have to share the boot with Harper but beware the cracks.