Today is Budget Day; will Election Day soon follow?

“It’s Budget Day today,” the good people at iPolitics noted in their Morning Brief. The “annual staring contest” will begin at 4:00 PM EST, when Finance Minster Jim Flaherty will table the Harper government’s proposed budget in the House.

Check out the iPolitics infographic explaining the budget process; it’s one of a number of useful resources they’ve posted as part of their Budget 2011 special report.

A poll released yesterday by Nanos revealed that “a majority of respondents, even a majority who are predisposed to vote Conservative, said they disagree with the government’s plan to spend between $18 billion and $29 billion to buy and maintain new fighter planes,” according to the Morning Brief. “The poll also said healthcare, not jobs and corporate tax cuts, should be the government’s priority.”

It remains to be seen whether the budget will address these concerns, and whether the opposition will support it. If they don’t, it’ll trigger an election – and even if they do, iPolitics argues, it could create “an interesting situation in which the budget passes and then the government falls shortly after on another item, either the contempt of parliament charges or, possibly, the Auditor-General’s report, due April 5.”

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