Focus on the NDP government’s budget, the worst received one in recent memory, has shifted in three months since it was delivered.

It is mostly because so many other crises have erupted. But the fiscal plan is still being processed in the legislature by way of scrutiny of Finance Minister Brenda Bailey’s spending estimates.

The short-form headline for the budget was about the government going $3 billion even further into deficit — to a record $13.3 billion this year — while expressing determination to get spending under control.

It was absurd from the get-go, and the Opposition is trying to establish that the framework behind the plan is just as bad.

The criticism is about the rolling three-year plan that accompanies every single-year budget. Bailey told the house that the current three-year plan “does get us moving in the correct direction toward a pathway to balance.”

But Opposition finance critic Peter Milobar pressed her on what the difference is between the current three-year plan and the previous ones.

Because none of the recent........

© Times Colonist