Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted content for your mid-week reading.

- We probably won't hear of this particular proposal again - at least until after another election. But Stephen Hui points out that the Harper Cons' latest budget includes more efforts to divert public money toward private profits through P3s, including by requiring that large federal projects consider be "screened" for P3 potential.

- Susan Delacourt nicely sums up the NDP's response to the Cons' seemingly-stillborn budget:

It seems to me that Jack Layton has just managed to fuse the (the economy and democracy) into one big rejection of the Harper government. Yes, he didn't like what was in the budget, but he also didn't like the way Harper treated the parties in a minority Parliament. That latter point is what seemed to make Layton look truly outraged in his post-budget interviews.

And Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is only likely to have inflamed that anger even more when he said, in his post-budget interview with CBC, that the government didn't believe it was its job to work with the opposition parties in crafting the budget. The government consults with Canadians, Flaherty said, not political rivals. That sounds an awful lot like the back of the hand to Parliament -- the same thing that prompted the historic Speaker's ruling against Harper's government.

- Meanwhile, for all the criticism of the Cons' divide-and-conquer strategy, it's worth noting that it proved to be no less of a failure than the budget itself. Which looks like just one more piece of evidence that the Cons' bullying tactics don't work so well against a party which actually stands for something.

- Finally, with an election campaign looking to start very shortly, it's always great to see that Alice is apparently ready and raring to go. So check out her baseline election metrics as the starting point for the campaign to come.