When it comes to budgets, It's all a matter of perception
Editorial

Government budgets, like the one brought down last week by Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, can be confusing documents, even for people who understand finances and are into number crunching.

These are massive documents, spelling out how billions of dollars are going to be spent, and where the billions are going to come from to cover that outlay.

So unless you have a mind that can be amused by these massive amounts of huge figures being thrown at you, budgets aren't fun.

What is fun is the reaction from people, especially politicians, to these documents.

Mayor Margaret Black was, of course, over the moon last week, after the province announced it would be providing $10.2 million toward fixing the Holland Marsh Drainage System. While that really wasn't part of the budget announcement, it did involve a lot of money for which local municipalities have been asking for years. So it's not surprising that King's mayor was happy with what the government is doing.

But if you look at the comments of other provincial politicians, and their federal cousins, it's pretty easy to tell that party affiliations are going to govern what they say.

If the political party you belong to is in opposition in the legislature, then the budget will generally stink. If pushed, you might be able to find a few positives, although one will get the feeling such praise is being voiced trough gritted teeth while holding your nose. The job of opposition, after all, is to oppose.

And if your party is in government, well you can't say enough positive things. And if you're pushed to criticize it, you might have to resort to scanning the documents in search of typographic errors. The job of government, after all, is to make the government look good.

And as one local politico observed when asked to comment on the budget, it all comes down to philosophy.

No government can hope to benefit by bringing down a budget that it thinks will be bad for the people, so we have to assume that Duncan and company had the best interests of Ontario in mind when they drafted their documents.

True, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had some problems with it, and he made his feelings publicly known, to the indignation of Duncan and Premier Dalton McGuinty. But the fact is Flaherty is not only an informed and seasoned politician, who drafted a couple of provincial budgets in his day, but he is also a resident of Ontario and an elected representative of of thousands of other residents of Ontario. He has every right to comment.

And if people disagree, as we were told last week, it's a matter of philosophy.