All in all, I guess, you could make a good case this was a pretty lousy budget.

It's deeply confusing, as without any doubt the Alberta government intended, and there are a couple of real disasters lurking in its pages -- got kids in post-secondary education, anyone?

But in the aftermath of the Alberta Budget Speech read yesterday afternoon by Progressive Conservative Finance Minister Doug Horner, who was wearing his new flip-flops at the time, you have to admit it was a pretty slick example of expectation management.

Even word that Tom Flanagan, the Icarus of Canada's neoconservative movement, had flown too close to the sun and was coming down to earth in flames was not enough to save Alberta's crisis-prone Progressive Conservative government from more pain!

One would have thought Premier Alison Redford would have been cheered when the principal architect of the Opposition Wildrose Party's brush with victory last April appeared at a seminar to defend users of child pornography and thereby assured his own political and professional demise.

After all, he was very nearly the cause of her party's destruction.

British Columbia and Alberta, Canada's two westernmost provinces, have lots in common.

Both have economies that rely heavily on volatile natural resources, well-educated, diverse and generally socially progressive populations, and Westminster-style parliamentary legislatures in beautiful old buildings.

Both are also governed by irresponsible neoconservative coalitions with misleading names that have been in power far too long, each of which has an obsession with balanced budgets and also faces a problem balancing the darned things.

Is the increasingly bitter fight between Alberta's government and the province's physicians just about money? It's said here it’s more about who gets to control the health care system.

If you need evidence for this assertion, look no further than the fact just two and a half months ago Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said he was going to impose a pay deal on the docs that would have seen their salaries keep on rising.

Premier Alison Redford is now traipsing around the province explaining that these same doctors are being paid too much -- why, they get 20 to 29 per cent more than their counterparts anywhere else in Canada!