It wasn't as shameless as Jack Layton mugging in Gretzky's during the gold medal game or as heartbreaking as discovering that handwarming Tim Hortons airport commercial is based on true stories.
But this week's provincial budget was still heavy on the chutzpah and, like a night of mixing grape and grain, jammed full of post-Olympic suffering.
Regard, for example, the budget's big news for Prince George: help to cash-strapped school districts.
No doubt spurred by the bludgeoning the government is taking on these pages and on the streets from angry parents concerned about education cuts, which include the imminent closure of 14 area schools, Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond promised some relief to this school district from its $7-million budget shortfall. On Tuesday, Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Pat Bell followed up by saying parents should be pleased that the budget, pending specifics to be released on March 15, contains an estimated $3 million for increased teachers' salaries, the annual facilities grant, and the province's imposed full-day kindergarten program.
Hopefully Mr. Bell's math is wonky. That's because, according to the district's
sustainability committee report, all-day kindergarten is going to cost $1.2 million, the crucial annual facility grant is worth $3.2 million and salary and benefit increases to teachers will cost $350,000. That's about $4.75 million worth of commitments and may not include $328,000 in HST costs, 'carbon neutral' edicts and higher MSP payments the province is clawing back.
So plenty of chutzpah - here's the relief, don't mind the strings - and plenty of pain as the School District No. 57 patiently waits to see how much bricks, mortar, flesh and blood it's going to have to carve from education in Prince George.
Admittedly, there are some bright spots in Hansen's $40.6 billion budget that, according to the Globe and Mail, touts a $1.7 billion deficit this year and the next two. The budget contains a $460 million increase in overall program spending, including, said Bell, $60 million for the arts and sports and, according to the Globe, money for childcare subsidies, leading some in the fiscally conservative world to brand it an NDP Lite affair.
But, as columnist Paul Willcocks pointed out, 11 out of 20 government ministries will feel the axe and, to indulge in some post-Games churlishness, it's hard not to agree with BCGEU boss Darryl Walker that rural communities will be paying the most to the piper.
In an era where securing aboriginal trust is crucial to industries like mining and forestry, Willcocks says the aboriginal relations budget is to fall from $67 million to $37 million, with the cash for reaching treaties cut by 80 per cent.
Bell's ministry, forestry, is going from a billion-dollar affair to a $606-million budget.
And again with the chutzpah - Bell held out hope that layoffs at the ministry could be held off by cuts to travel and vehicles. Perhaps, but as Vaughn Palmer pointed out, the B.C. Liberals have been reining in that supposed discretionary spending since they came into power, most recently in 2008. There probably isn't that much fat left and unless government workers miraculously sprout wings and learn to fly, there will be job cuts.
And indeed the rumour mill is already churning in respect to the forestry ministry in particular.
Perhaps less bureaucrats mean less red tape - but the likely answer is less hands means the wheels of government will turn that much slower. That's also part of the chutzpah: the Globe says much of the Liberals' hopes for reaching the black rely on freezing public sector wages and cutting 11 per cent of government jobs, perhaps as many as 3,700.
And, of course, less jobs, government or otherwise, means more pain in Prince George and northern B.C.
Stimulus spending is another area where this community and region may be shortchanged. While the Liberals will argue that they've been more than generous here, the fact remains they may have spent, according to a Palmer estimate, $8 billion on the Games. Indeed, recently it was revealed the province would foot the bill for $165 million in federal infrastructure payments in exchange for Ottawa sharing more of the security bill - a switcheroo that essentially means B.C. is paying $252.5 million of the Olympics' $900 million safety tab.
Hopefully some of that $8 billion will be offset by sponsorship and ticket sales but there's still $1 billion for a road to a bankruptcy-threatened ski resort, $2 billion for a smoother ride to Vancouver airport, and $883 million for the spectacular views of Vancouver's new Convention and Exhibition Centre.
But the province won't be able to find $274 million for the electrification of the Highway 37 corridor, considered by some to be crucial to jumpstarting mining and run-of-the-river power projects, until 2012, leading Quesnel NDP MLA Bob Simpson to wonder aloud if the endeavour is in jeopardy.
Admittedly, much of the challenges are a product of the Great Recession: according to Hansen, the value of B.C.'s exports fell 24.3 per cent in 2009, compared to 2008. The government also fears a "double-dip" recession in the U.S. and more weakness in the American dollar could continue to damage prospects here.
But it still means, after the first day the greatest carnival of all leaves B.C., there will more budgets like this one, more chutzpah -- and more pain in northern B.C.
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