This week in QP: Income splitting overshadows the budget

Budgets are important. For the duration of the government’s first two mandates, Budget Day was on everyone’s calendar as a Very Important Time—after all, if the opposition joined forces and voted against the Conservatives’ proposals, Canada went to the polls. A new era of majority government bestows much less drama on the finance minister’s big day. This week’s budget was perhaps the least impactful of any since 2006. The week was dominated not by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s economic plan, but instead by the government’s ongoing quest to rewrite election rules—and Flaherty’s offhand remarks about the possible ineffectiveness of a key Tory campaign pledge.