I gather this is what passes for restraint in Ottawa. A year ago, the finance minister gleefully unwrapped a budget that was by common consent a pig-roast of new spending — uncontrolled, unfocused, and above all unconservative. But that was then: times were good, the revenues were flowing, and it seemed prosperity would never end.

And now? With growth forecasts cut in half, revenues actually in decline, and concerns about the U.S. economy overshadowing all, the Conservative pre-budget message was all about the need for restraint. Why, Jim Flaherty even had himself photographed having his shoes re-soled, rather than pick up the traditional new pair. So you can imagine my shock, on opening the budget, to find that the new-look, skinflint minister plans to spend every bit as much as he forecast in last year's bacchanalia, plus a little more. Last year, he was "the biggest-spending finance minister in Canadian history." This year, he still is.

It could have been worse, I suppose. The Conservatives only tucked $2.7 billion of new spending into last year's figures — the same year-end splurge they routinely savaged when in opposition — rather than the two and three times that amount the opposition wanted. Yet it remains the case that, under this Conservative government, Ottawa will spend more than $208 billion this fiscal year, or a little over $6,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, that's the most it's ever spent. It's one-third more real dollars per citizen than the government spent a decade ago. The budget titles itself "Responsible Leadership." Imagine what they'd have spent if they were irresponsible.

The constraint, of course, is that the surplus, after averaging $12 billion a year over the last three years, has suddenly plunged to $2.3 billion in the coming fiscal year, and $1.3 billion the next — less than the so-called "prudence" margin of $3 billion. Much doleful prose has been written to the effect that these are the wages of tax cuts — that, had the Tories not chosen to cut two points off the GST, at a cost of $12 billion annually, they might have had that much more fiscal room to work with, i.e., to spend. To my mind, this is one of the few things to recommend the GST cuts.

But surely, if we're wondering who took the surplus, we should at least include among the suspects the $33-billion increase in spending the Tories have engineered over their first three budgets. Perhaps comparisons with a decade ago seem remote. Very well. Try this one on for size: had the Tories merely kept spending to where it was when they took office, plus three per cent per year — that is, had they taken all of the vast extravagance for which they rightly criticized the Liberals, and merely added enough each year to cover inflation and population growth — program spending today would be, not $208 billion, but $191 billion. The government would not be in peril of falling into deficit, but would be sitting on a comfortable $20-billion cushion — even after the GST cuts. If times are tight now, it's because they were so loose before.

Liberal or Conservative, governments spent the revenue just as fast as it was coming in, leaving themselves with precious little margin for that inevitable time when the revenues are not flowing quite so freely. And they're still spending it. The effect of a decline in revenues is not to cause them to reduce spending, or even to slow its growth, but merely to refrain from accelerating it still further.

Mind you, merely because a finance minister does not have billions in surplus revenues to work with should not be an impediment to creative budgeting: balanced budgets, after all, are supposed to be the norm. And there are some flashes of creativity in the budget. The proposed tax-free savings accounts — a kind of inverted RRSP, with the tax deduction at the back end rather than the front — are something economists have been recommending for years. If the $5,000 ceiling limits their impact, it's a start. Likewise, the acorn represented by PPP Canada Inc., a fund to support more use of "public-private partnerships," may grow into something more substantial in time. There's encouraging language about a new approach to Aboriginal economic development, and a useful demonstration project in carbon sequestration, a promising technology in the fight against global warming.

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