What the New Democrats want

The official opposition has sent a letter to Jim Flaherty to explain what they’d like to see in the spring budget.

Included therein is a demand that omnibus bills not be used to implement the budget. There was some suggestion last month that this year’s budget would be "smaller." Smaller is possibly not a hard expectation to meet. What would constitute a small budget bill at this point—200 pages? 100 pages? 50 pages?—is a matter of perspective.