The Manitoba provincial budget is a toss up between comedy and tragedy. The tax cuts are a joke and the spending hikes are near tragic.

Not unlike all good dramas, the budget did display some classical features. Finance Minister Greg Selinger took the advice of the ancient Roman Senator Cicero. He balanced the budget and repaid some public debt, "lest Rome (or Manitoba) become bankrupt."

Unlike Cicero, Selinger left unscathed the "arrogance of officialdom." Whilst staring down the barrel of an impeding recession, the Doer government threw caution to the wind and ratcheted up spending to record levels.

The scorched earth strategy to public finances left a pittance for tax relief. For every dollar in tax cuts, spending increased by another six dollars.

The budget is balanced in name only. With spending up by $359 million compared to only $59 million in tax cuts, there is no question where the NDP's sympathies lie. Guess again if you thought they were with the Manitoba taxpayer.

Of all the options available to the NDP - owing to an extra $389 million cash infusion - tax relief barely registered. After bitterly complaining for years about dismal minimum wage levels in Manitoba, the NDP were in a position to give all Manitobans - low income earners included - a sizable raise with a muscular tax cut. Hopes were dashed.

Selinger had bigger fish to fry. Why give taxes back to the people who earned it when you can beef up bureaucracy and reward your own government? Practically every department will benefit from spending increases over last year.

The largest spending hike is in healthcare. It now gobbles up 38 cents on every dollar. At the rate healthcare spending is growing, it won't be much longer than 15 years before healthcare consumes the whole budget. By then we'll need only two departments. Finance to collect the money and Healthcare to spend it.

The NDP seem to have ignored the reality that Manitoba has a relatively small economy and population base from which to exact its taxes. Spending Manitoba to prosperity is no substitute for a Manitoba tax advantage.

If the tax gap with the other provinces held us back, behold the new tax canyon. Manitoba's personal income taxes are so far behind the provinces from Ontario west as to tempt ridicule.

According to the NDP's own budget document, a Manitoba family of four with a $40,000 income will pay twice as much income taxes than the same family in Alberta. Our fears of being lapped by Alberta tax cuts have come true and Premier Ralph Klein hasn't even announced his tax cuts for the year.

Never mind Alberta, keeping pace with Saskatchewan's income tax relief package was one expectation that should have kept the NDP's feet to the tax cuts fire. But there was no spark in the Budget to ignite the NDP to compete with their Prairie rivals.

To add insult to injury, the NDP allowed for a few back door tax grabs. Hydro rates are likely to shoot up now that the province raised the water power rental fee by $52 million. And the NDP will continue to collect bracket creep income taxes by failing to adjust the tax brackets to inflation.

Timid on tax cuts and over the top on spending, Budget 2001 makes Manitoba ever more a mendicant province dependent on federal transfers and the dim hope that taxpayers and the business community keep still.