In recent days federal politics has become more encouraging and exciting for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). To use a hockey metaphor, we've scored some key goals that were assisted by some unlikely role players.

On Saturday, major newspapers carried the story of a critical ruling by the World Trade Organization (WTO) concerning Canada's flagship corporate welfare program, Technology Partnerships Canada.

The WTO ruled that TPC constitutes an "illegal export subsidy" to Bombardier, and for that matter, all other companies in the aerospace sector who have received TPC funds.

We warned the Industry Minister and the Canadian public about this possibility last spring when we released our landmark study on Corporate Welfare. So the score is Taxpayers 1, Federal Government 0.

But instead of doing their time in the penalty box and changing their game plan (read: dumping TPC), the feds continue to break the rules and hand out TPC money. It will probably take a WTO game misconduct in the form of more rulings and all out trade wars before the feds get the message to get out of the business of corporate welfare.

Moving from subsidies to the budget, the score is now Taxpayers 3, Federal Government 0. But we didn't put the puck in the net. MP Alex Shepherd scored on his own team, not once, but twice, with his criticisms of the federal budget.

First, Mr. Shepherd, an Ontario Liberal MP and a chartered accountant quite rightly pointed out to the Hill Times that the government is not accurately representing figures in the budget. He said "these figures here, I think they have been massaged." Mr. Shepherd went on to say that the government hasn't really reduced spending. "What we have really done is keep spending constant rather than reducing it."

Of course, the CTF pointed this out to the House of Commons Finance Committee in its pre-budget submission last fall to no avail.

Mr. Shepherd's second goal on his own team went right through goaltender Martin's pads. He points out that Paul Martin has not committed to actually reducing a single penny of our $579 billion federal debt for the next three years. Shepherd, like the CTF, wants the government, his government, to set specific debt reduction targets and not rely on the current strategy of simply growing its way out of debt.

Earlier this week he told Canadian Press that "it wouldn't take a lot of projections to figure out that if in fact we turned into a recession that the debt-to-GDP figures would go into a different direction." He finished by saying "I believe there should be an actual target for debt reduction. This debt-to-GDP figures is something we borrowed from the Europeans."

Too bad Mr. Shepherd is not a member of the House Finance Committee, his honest analysis would be a welcome change from the current crop of Liberal lapdogs who now sit on the committee.

But the feds have spoiled our shutout with their wasteful, pointless and offensive $3.5 million print and radio ad campaign extolling the virtues of the so-called "health budget". Half page ads were found in all five Ottawa papers (Globe and Mail, National Post, Ottawa Sun, Ottawa Citizen and Le Droit) this week extolling the virtues of the budget. Even though everyone knows what's in the budget, Martin and company figured they'd blow another $3.5 million patting themselves on the back.

Twenty-seven cents out of every dollar we send to Ottawa this year will go to paying $41 billion in interest on the national debt. That's $112 million a day. The ad campaign should have been dumped in favour of 40 more minutes of debt-interest payments - cost, $3.5 million.