It's becoming hard to miss -- the growing disconnect between the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister just when those two have become the most pivotal pairing in Canada to deal with a battered economy.

On Friday they were at it again - Stephen Harper saying the $40-billion fiscal stimulus package was carved in stone; Jim Flaherty saying he was very open to adding more deficit billions if it's required. I'm guessing the stimulus numbers won't be boosted until Mr. Harper's polling puts his approval numbers in a freefall.  

But it's not their first off-script encounter. It was no secret that Mr. Flaherty was furious when the PMO leaked the deficit figure and most of his budget ahead of schedule. There's some evidence he didn't even know it was being done until the revelations hit the newswires. Then there was the fiscal update debacle where Mr. Harper insisted on inserting the elimination of public financing for political parties, which severely tarnished Mr. Flaherty's already rusty reputation and almost cost his Conservatives the government.  

Now this, something as critical as how far this government will go to combat the recession is up for internal debate between the number one and two bigwigs on all federal matters fiscal.

If the Liberals were smart they'd be asking: Will the real finance minister please stand up? 

And if it's not Jim Flaherty, then he should step down. 

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Another of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 18 appointments to the Senate is in trouble.

Former CTV icon Mike Duffy decided to go graphic in his, um, maiden Senate speech this week in describing the power relationship between Harper-bashing Atlantic premiers following a fawning salute to his prime ministerial sponsor.

“I was disappointed to see that our dynamic young premier in Prince Edward Island, Robert Ghiz, has climbed into bed with the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and honorable senators know what a grotesque scene that is,’’ Sen. Duffy slyly told his eyebrow-raised peers. 

“Do honorable senators know what happens when two politicians climb into bed together? One of them comes out on top and I am afraid that when one is in bed with Danny Williams, he will come out on top and I would hate to see where that will leave P.E.I. in the end.”

That pillow talk had Mr. Duffy’s former media colleagues wincing on Wednesday, wondering what would prompt him to make such an awkward cocktail-calibre analogy during his debut address.

“I think people are pretty easily offended if they’re offended by that,” Sen. Duffy shrugged when contacted by local media after his speech. 

Fair enough, but what’s best said in a bar is best left in the bar. The Red Chamber is allegedly for sober second thoughts. 

Okay, this isn't exactly deconstructing Ottawa but . . .

Listening to former premier Ralph (“I won’t blink”) Klein advocate an Alberta spending spree to fight the recession, including new (and legislatively illegal) debt if necessary, got me thinking about a former hawkish MLA who undoubtedly had a cardiac reading the red ink embrace by his former boss.
Former Taber MLA Ron Hierath was one of the truest bluest 1993 believers in deficit elimination and government shrinkage.
Sensing fiscal weakness in the legislature, Hierath wrote a plea to his former Conservative colleagues a few weeks ago urging them to cut government and taxes, not increase spending and bureaucratic sprawl.
“It is critical at this time, that everyone tighten their belts, and that includes governments.  Really, we need to spend less. We all know this is the way to stimulate our economy,” he said.
“To quote Ralph Klein, “We have a spending problem”, Hierath reminded them.  Hmmm. Well, to quote Klein in a better fit with the times; “That was then and this is now”.

It’s hard to imagine how such a damaged resume could’ve survived the supposedly ruthless scrutiny of the Prime Minister’s Office, particularly when the appointment up for grabs is a 40-year guaranteed Senate gig with an annual salary of $130,000 plus perks.
  But the allegations, investigations and accusations against newly-appointed aboriginal Senator Patrick Brazeau, 34, are piling up in a frenzy that it’s quickly put the unelected Senate under a negative light and must surely embarrass Canada’s other six native senatorial representatives. 
Consider the growing list of Brazeau indiscretions apparently overlooked by the PMO, but unearthed by reporters in fairly short order. 
For starters, Brazeau had to be arm-twisted to give up his six-figure job as chief the Congress of Aboriginal People before taking the senate seat, lest it be seen as double-dipping on the taxpayers’ tab.  
That Conservative-cheerleading organization is still under investigation by Health Canada for its use or misuse of $260,000 in public funds including $16,050 in suspect payments to Brazeau or his sidekicks.
The man described in his bio as a loving father of three is darn close to being a deadbeat dad with the mother of one offspring telling CTV that Brazeau hasn’t seen or properly supported his 14-year-old son in eight years.
Brazeau’s been seen tooling around Parliament Hill in a new Porsche SUV, has hired Ottawa staff who were reportedly hitting the sauce hard during work hours at his former congress job and is still fending off refuted allegations of sexual harassment at a human rights tribunal.
If this is the calibre of individual Stephen Harper had in mind when he set out to reform the Senate, well, it’s enough to make you yearn for those days when they stuffed the place with backroom bagmen.
It’s clear that Patrick Brazeau should’ve been kept a senator-in-waiting a bit longer to clear his name -- or save taxpayers from a bad appointment.

On the 51st day, they acted. With Labour Minister Rona Ambrose waving back-to-buses legislation backed by all four political parties, Ottawa's transit strike ended Thursday after the federal threat  spooked an instant settlement. Ambrose deserves credit for negotiating the consensus and Prime Minister Stephen Harper chased her down to deliver a pat on the back personally, but the question lingers: Why did it take so long for the feds to act? The strike's had a horrendous impact on downtown business over Christmas and severely inconvenienced thousands of elderly or disabled residents trapped in their homes. It has also made it impossible to find a cab and it takes forever to drive across the traffic-clogged city, but nobody outside the city would empathize unless they experienced it for themselves. So who arrived back in Ottawa this week to live the mayhem for themselves? Why, welcome back MPs. Perhaps I'm being too cynical here, but being stranded at the airport or in traffic gridlock might've been just enough frustration to motivate MPs into launching the strike-ending intervention.

It must hurt to be a cabinet minister in waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Jack Layton will now wait forever for his ministerial limo and driver to show up.
The New Democrat leader has seen his final clear shot at major political influence vanish with the death of the Liberal-led coalition.
Mr. Layton, while the most personable of the three federalist leaders, craves clout far beyond the one-tenth of seats his party claims in the Commons.  The three magic words to Mr. Layton are Balance Of Power, which is what he held during the 2005 parliamentary showdown.
Just a fond memory now. That’s why he unleashed hell-hath-no-fury scorn against Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in an audio attack ad on Thursday, labeling him a lousy leader for continuing the party’s tradition of rolling over like an obedient dog on Conservative confidence votes.
The inconvenient memory is how Layton propped up the Liberals in 2005, blasting Stephen Harper for crawling into bed with the separatists to oppose the final Paul Martin budget.
Mr. Layton’s definition of leadership in 2009 seems to be declaring an intention to join with the separatist Bloc to take down a three-month-old federalist government to force an election on a sight-unseen budget. Hmmm.
At least Ignatieff read the budget, took the night to analyze it and figured out a strateguc response before he conditionally sided with the Conservatives.
Here’s my fearless doomed-to-be-wrong prediction. The minute the Liberals enjoy the winning conditions to vote non-confidence in the Harper government and force an election they think they can win, Jack Layton will find an excuse to support the government. 
The real reason he’s attacking Ignatieff is purely election politics. If he’s not with Ignatieff, he’s losing to him. 

First challenge to sell a federal budget is always where to stage the day-after photo-op for the Prime Minister.
President Barack Obama went roll-brushing a wall with spin doctors suggesting the cutline of ‘he’s on a roll’.
Stephen Harper’s people, not wanting to be copycats, are planning to take the Prime Minister to a construction site today and hand him a power nailgun to use. Their suggestion for a caption? “He’s got it nailed.”
He might be nailed, but fiscal purists might be thinking in terms of a coffin not coffers.

Now, about that Note from the Throne, all seven glorious minutes of it, which is something of a record for brevity and corresponding lack of substance. It was read by the Governor General in a Senate reformed with 18 new Conservative-loyal senators, including former CTV journalists Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, who now boast job security the rest of us can only dream about. 

The Throne Speech was a rehash from start to finish, with a concluding paragraph which basically recommended a re-read the last speech for anyone seeking an agenda beyond the economic scramble into deficit that will be officially proclaimed in tomorrow's budget.

Ah, yes, the budget. Or what's left to announce after cabinet ministers finish violating traditional secrecy with PMO-sanctioned announcements.

If my math is correct, more than half the $20-billion of red-ink spending has been rolled out as the Conservative government kick starts a deficit that will rise at roughly $4 million per hour.
Monday's biggie was a $7-billion Infrastructure building, fixing or green-enhancing spending spree, most of it conditional on cash-strapped municipalities and provinces kicking in matching contributions. The official line from the minister's office is that this process will "leverage" spending, tripling the amount of construction that the federal funds will buy. But given the sorry state of some junior government balance sheets, it might be tripling the deficits.

My first call was to Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier, who is usually a voice of reason on civic matters when the big city rulers gather to gripe about federal budgets. He's been in the room when the feds were warned by cities that their infrastructure budgets are tapped out. He suspects it might leave some of the funds on the table, unspent stimulus because the towns of cities cannot afford the partnership.

"It's not ideal. But even when you don't get the ideal solution, you have to find a way to turn it around to your advantage. We need the infrastructure, so we'll have to find a way to get the money."

For Calgary that means building social housing with public land serving as the civic contribution or private partnerships to defray city council's tab.

Hopefully other mayors have creative ideas to get the cash rolling into jobs instead of sitting unmatched in the federal vault.

One interesting tidbit that didn't rate a column, but merits a mention, is that secret gathering in Calgary last week between Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and 20 business and political leaders.

My source says it wasn't a love-in - this is Stephen Harper's home town, after all -- but it apparently went exceedingly well given the Liberal brand that's sported by Mr. Ignatieff.

He's not about to steal seats in the Tory stronghold, but give Mr. Ignatieff points for making the pitch and listening to Calgary's feedback for more than two hours. Couple that with his Montreal message last week, where he sang oilsands praises as an economic necessity in the greenest province of them all, and you've got to wonder if this guy has a plan to conquer Alberta for his party. Seems like a longshot to me, but so was the notion of Edmonton New Democrat MP Linda Duncan just four months ago.

I had started an election blog last September, which immediately fell victim to excessive demands for column-writing, the cross-country travel grind of Leaders' Tours and the groggy disorientation of not knowing which city or time zone I was in when the alarm went off, usually way before the sun was up or the Advil had kicked in.

Days, nay WEEKS, would pass without fresh material. Understandably, readers stayed away although, interestingly, I received more pro and (mostly) con emails after blogging about former Liberal leader Stephane Dion's botched television interview late in the campaign than all campaign print columns combined. How my poor Blackberry suffered under that assault.

This blog will be different. Promise.

It will be updated daily, include your input (so try to keep those emails profanity-free), feature the oddities of Ottawa that don't rate a full column and, if I can figure out the technology, link to my regular newspaper column. All suggestions for material or improvement are welcome and news tips will be eagerly verified and, if found to be true, posted. You can send feedback via email (dmartin@canwest.com) or phone me directly (613-369-4875).