…is a lot smaller than people were expecting.

• Federal Budget 2008 In Depth (CBC.ca)

This has irritated a number of people:

• Miller slams federal budget as ‘lost opportunity’
• Budget far from green, environmentalists say
• Manufacturing, forestry say budget does little for them

You might guess that none of these people got as much money as they wanted. I wish I could report that this is so because Flaherty — you remember him, he’s the one who gushed about how the tanking US dollar was such a wonderful thing for Canada — has trimmed away everything but the bare essentials in anticipation of the effects of an American recession upon the Canadian economy.

I cannot. One of the highlights of the budget is

$25 million for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays.

Thrilling.