It's funny. In a lopsided political world, when weeks are spent dissecting and debating over whether seconds or minutes were edited from Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal's surreptitious tapes with Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh and the PM's chief of staff Tim Murphy, not much time is spent on Parliament's No. 1 job, its review of government spending. We in the media are also at fault. So amidst all the hoopla over last week's crucial budget votes and anticipated political drama (that didn't actually happen), was the fact that MPs stood up in the House and approved more than $200-billion in spending estimates for the year ending March 31, 2006. They did it in a few hours and in numerous roll call votes. The $4.6-billion budget bill itself was only two-and-a-half pages long and had little or no details!

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