On differing priorities

A Strategic Counsel poll asked Canadians what they want to see addressed in the federal budget - and the answer couldn't have been much different from what the Cons figure to offer:

When respondents were asked what they thought to be the most important issue for the budget to address, social programs were the clear favourite:

* Increasing spending on social programs: 50 per cent
* Cutting taxes: 19 per cent
* Transferring funds to the provinces for their use: 15 per cent
* Reducing debt: 13 per cent.

"Canadians are experiencing right now something that we refer to as 'joyless prosperity,'" said Gregg.

"They believe the economy is in good shape and we're having fewer people anticipating the future with economic dread. We have more people today claiming that they are better off financially than they were 10 years ago since I've been tracking (results) in the past 30 years."

Yet the mood is still not optimistic, he said.

"That's because (Canadians) believe that in the face of this prosperity, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer ... And secondly, that our social safety net is unravelling in the face of this prosperity -- our health care system is worse, our education system is worse, the quality of life in our cities is deteriorating."

It surely isn't a coincidence that the Cons are now scrambling to relabel their provincial funding into the "social programs" column rather than the "transfer to the provinces" one.

But a good chunk of that will be in the form of a revised equalization formula with no direct link to program funding. And even any amount provided in transfer payments will offer little (if any) means of tracing that funding into genuine provincial investment.

Which means that it's all too likely that even an election budget under favourable fiscal conditions will have little demonstrable positive effect due to the Cons' aversion to effective government. And that can only signal just how little interest the Cons have in getting anything done in the longer term on the issue seen as most important to Canadians.

Update: Robert has more.