Perhaps the best that could be said of last week's federal budget is that it could have been much, much worse.
The Conservative government is working to get the country out of a deficit. They are doing this entirely by cutting back on spending, rather than raising taxes on anyone - even the very wealthiest or most profitable. As the party with the most seats in the House of Commons, they can certainly chart their own course.
But does that course send them sailing straight onto the rocky shores of hypocrisy?
For much of the past year, the Tories have been pleased to focus on matters they couldn't get through as a minority.
Tough-on-crime legislation was near the top of their agenda, along with the controversial purchase of new fighter jets for the military.
Yet in this budget we see that Public Safety Canada, which includes Corrections Canada and federal policing, is being cut by $687.9 million over three years. The military is losing $1.1 billion over the same timeframe.
How are we to afford locking up more offenders, for more time? How will this put more police on the streets?
Perhaps the Conservatives are doing what they rightly condemned the Chrétien-era Liberals for: downloading costs.
Offenders who spend less than two years in jail do "provincial time," in jails that cost the taxpayers of each province.
Provinces and municipal governments pick up a lot of the costs of policing.
As for the military, with the jet purchases, it looks as if the Conservatives will succumb to the lure of flashy technology over more trained soldiers and officers. How many boots-on-the-ground peacekeeping missions or disaster relief projects will the Canadian Forces be able to undertake if reduced funds are being sucked into the upkeep of a new fleet of aircraft?
With their majority in hand, the Tories will be able to take all the credit, or blame, for this budget.
