Six Feet Under the Budget Lock-up

It’s budget day in the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island today.

I arrived for work at the new office in St. Paul’s Parish Hall to find some very serious looking people protecting the entrances to the main hall, and what appeared to be some very serious looking journalists poring over very serious looking documents.

I assume that this means that the so-called “budget lock-up” is happening mere steps from where I type here in the basement. While this affords me no special access to the financial future of the province (unless I engage in subterfuge), the excitement of proximity is nonetheless palpable.

As I related in this space 11 years ago, I used to be deeply involved in the budget lock-up, as I was myself locked up so as to ready the budget documents to go online. Like they did for the first time in 1997.

I have many pleasant memories of that first and subsequent lock-ups, memories that are inseparably linked to the taste of mint-flavoured Nanaimo bars that used to be brought in from Central Farmer’s Coop for the assembled media and their Provincial Treasury informants.