A provincial election looms in 2015.
In case you missed that point, today's Budget didn't.
Its eye was squarely on the prize.
Between now and then, it's going to be a lean, mean, whip-cracking machine.
Layoffs, consolidations, cutbacks, crafty spins and conspiratorial circling of the bandwagons.
Then in 2015, it will get all mushy, generous and overflowing with largess.
Budgets by this government are not really about families, communities or People.
(As their PR spin would have you think)
They are political tools meant to castigate and control our very lives in between election years.
Budget 2015 will then become even more Machiavellian as it targets in to woo, coo and fool the people during the election campaign.
Roads will be paved, hospitals built,ribbons cut, ferries fixed, babies kissed and maybe even a fake tear shed...
Budgets don't have to work that way - they can be a mindful,compassionate,responsive genuinely engaging and thoughtful process.
But that is not the way this Government operates.
They`d rather build self-serving empires than be there for the People.
The bottom line is that Budget 2013 cannot wipe out 10 years of infractions and political interference.
Even with a shallow 10-year Sustainability Plan as part of today`s Budget,
you get the sense that the expression to hell in a hand basket might just
have been perfectly coined to describe this year`s provincial economic document.
And Election 2015 might just be the year when those in a hand basket
get to take their final haphazard journey.
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