…and blogging here will be light: I’ll be in the journo lockup shortly, and will remain there incommunicado until Finance Minister Jim Flaherty rises to begin his speech in the House.

As is typical with the Harper regime, favourites are being played even here. There is a second lock-up, one for “stakeholders.” A major public service union, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, has been excluded from that lock-up for the first time in living memory. PIPSC has apparently been too critical of the government, and is being subjected to some petty retaliation.

The government claims “lack of space.” But guess whom it found space for? Why, Dimitri Soudas. Name ring a bell? He’s a “stakeholder,” but the representative of 60,000 public employees under the gun is not?

It’s going to be a long day, and I shall be assisting the on-line magazine Straight Goods, doing some interviews on the Hill afterwards, but I’ll get something up on the budget tonight. Including—I hope—some commentary from PIPSC President Gary Corbett.