Some brief thoughts on the budget ...

- Looks like Boisclair saved us all from a Spring election. This must be the first time a provincial (separatist, no less) opposition leader determined FEDERAL election timing.

- But with no federal election in the offing, it looks like there will be a election in Prince Edward Island in the coming weeks. While Flaherty didn't deliver a 10-province standard with full inclusion of natural resources, he has undoubtedly delivered more for PEI on this file than 4 government MPs ever did (as PEI had all Liberal MPs throughout the Liberal government years). Binns will be rightly able to claim that his relationship with Harper delivered more money for PEI and I'm sure he thinks that can help ensure he becomes PEIs longest serving premier (well, he'd have to stay on until 2009 to do that, which is an open question).

- Is it just me or is Harper doing a good job of being moderate? I mean when the harshest criticism for you budget are coming the business lobby ad the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we're talking about a Liberal budget. Of course, the Liberals and the NDP will oppose it for fear they are slapped by the other as "propping up Harper", but this will certainly make it harder to paint Harper as a scary boogeyman who will make us all Americans.

- Finally, flowing from that last point, clearly Harper would love to go to the polls on this budget. Will he find an issue to bring down parliament on this session? I tend to think not, because to do so he might have to make something really right-wing a confidence matter, which would kind of defeat the whole purpose of all this moderation.

Should we working for democracy this morning, but saw something in my morning perusal of Macleans online (which is really great, btw), I saw this story about the NDPs budget demands and my blood started to boil a little bit.

Good to see Jack getting out and setting parameters for NDP support for the budget. And I guess it's smart politics to make a solid pitch to win Saskatchewan seats, after all they are eminently winnable. But calling for the exclusion of resource revenues from the equalization is bad policy and not in line with NDP values.

Why? Because this would royally screw my beloved home province and is not in the spirit of the constitution.

Subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution states that "Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making Equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."

I fail to see how excluding oil and gas revenues, which as Canada inevitably becomes an energy superpower will definitely become and bigger component of provincial budgets, from the equalization formula helps equalize provincial services.

In the interests of fairness, the NDP should be calling for nothing less than a 10-province standard that includes all provincial revenues. Anything else, in an era of rising energy prices, is unfair. If the goal of equalization is to allow provinces to provide equal services at comparable taxation levels, then you can't exclude the huge pile of petro-dollars in their coffers from the calculation. To do so will prevent provinces with no oil or gas, like poor little PEI, from having the same fiscal capacity as other provinces.

The biggest irony is that PEI might have the most forward looking energy and environmental policies of any provincial government. Despite an ongoing fiscal crunch, PEI has made investment in wind power a priority and are set to be leaders in this industry, that I thought Jack Layton supported.

The NDP is no more likely to win seats in PEI than they are in the Saguenay or Missisauga or Calgary, but that doesn't mean they should not get behind a fair equalization system that works for all Canadians.