Nick Taylor-Vaisey considers the madness that is budget day, thus allowing me here to cite Nick citing me.
Nick Taylor-Vaisey considers the madness that is budget day, thus allowing me here to cite Nick citing me.
“You could do weeks of stories about what’s in the budget. It’s insane to think that all that can be covered in a day,” says Wherry, who recently wrote about the declining relevance of the House of Commons. “It should be the start of the coverage, but we all shrug our shoulders and walk away.”
That’s because more incisive reporting is relatively rare in the world of minority government, which is very much a zero-sum game where every story has a winner and loser. “Most stories are ‘X’ versus ‘Y’. It’s entertaining, but I don’t know what people are supposed to take away from that,” Wherry says. “We don’t spend a lot of time explaining what’s going on.”
The Maclean’s budget team (including your friends Geddes, Wells and Coyne) is, or soon will be, in the budget lock-up. They will emerge shortly after 4pm—when the Finance Minister tables the budget in the House—with stories, videos and revelations of what hasn’t already been leaked. I’ll be on the Hill for most of the afternoon, taking in the ambience and wandering around in the background of various live TV footage. A sketch of some sort will follow.