If the government had rushed this budget out with much less hyperbole a month after the election, it might have been a passable transitional effort if accompanied by a promise of comprehensive reform without undue delay, aimed directly at the greatest problems and opportunities facing us. What we have been given instead is a not entirely credible promise of progress at a snail’s pace towards deficit reduction and tax rationalization, and a holy grail of a trillion dollars of investment, half from the private sector, with minimal elaboration, (much applauded by the Liberal media echo chamber. The government, to judge from the epochal reforms that it trumpeted for months prior to last Tuesday, has some abstract recognition of the necessity for radical change in taxing, spending, federal provincial fiscal relations, and the unconditional end of the war on oil and gas, even if accompanied by rhetorical window-dressing for the regime’s climate-frenzied supporters.