WITHOUT A DOUBT, the new federal government's first budget

was an exercise in smart politics.

After all, it has passed muster in the House of Commons, thanks to some shrewd backroom manoeuvring that obtained crucial support from the Bloc Qubecois.

Although all three opposition parties have been critical of the Conservatives' determination to scrap the national child care program launched by the short-lived Paul Martin government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apparently secured support from the Bloc MPs by assuring them that Quebec will get just as much (if not more) money from Ottawa through a reformed equalization program.

That enriched transfer will go a long way toward meeting the financial burden in Quebec, which alone has an elaborate child care program that sees parents paying a tiny fraction of what parents in Ontario and the other provinces must pay to enroll their pre-school children in provincially regulated daycare facilities.

The pre-election "sunshine" budget brought down by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was also calculated to be attractive to most taxpayers, boasting the promise of 28 different tax cuts, the most high-profile of which is the two-stage reduction in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from the current seven per cent, to six per cent this July and five per cent next year.

However, it will be interesting, indeed, to see how much change in take-home pay this will mean for lowand averageincome earners. (Some observers have suggested the government's cancellation of tax-rate reductions provided in the Liberals' pre-election budget, but not enacted before the government fell, will mean take-home pay will actually shrink.)

No doubt the most controversial aspect of the budget will continue to be the Harper government's approach to child care, and in particular the plan to send out monthly cheques to all families with children under six years of age. Interestingly, these families are to get

$100 a month per child even when the children are in school all day, as five-yearolds are in kindergarten in some parts of the country. Nor will there be any need to show that the children are in a daycare facility, the argument being that stay-athome moms richly deserve to be compensated.

We have no problem with the idea of efforts to compensate parents for the costs involved in child-rearing, but we do have a problem with the way it's being done.

As we see it, sending out monthly cheques is a politically astute but terribly expensive way of providing such compensation.

Although the payments are to be recognized under the Income Tax Act, so that wealthy parents will actually wind up returning much of the money to the government, we've never heard any explanation (nor do we expect one) as to why the entire scheme isn't being operated through the income tax system.

Even now, it clearly would be possible for the monthly cheques to be replaced with tax credits of the same value, the result being a corresponding increase in the take-home pay of the claiming parent.

Such an approach would simply require employees to advise their employers that they qualify for the benefit and want their deductions reduced accordingly. (Or those who preferred could simply wait until they filed their tax returns and claim the $1,200-per-child deduction, in many cases then getting a refund for their tax overpayment.)

By going the monthly cheque route, the government is creating a bureaucratic monster, since it will presumably be necessary to have qualifying parents apply for the new "baby bonus" as well as a new bureaucracy within Finance to monitor the system, responding to changes in address and a multitude of other changed circumstances ranging from new babies to adoptions, separations and fatalities.

It would be interesting, indeed, to see what the government has budgeted for administering the new scheme and what it ultimately will cost, in addition to the

obvious cost of printing and mailing the cheques, which perhaps will bear the signatures of Messrs. Harper and Flaherty.

The inspiration for the monthly cheques may have come from Alberta Premier Ralph Klein's decision to send all resident Albertans a $400 cheque in recognition of the oil province's unexpected budget surpluses.

However, we find it interesting that the monthly-cheque decision comes from a Conservative government after the previous (Progressive) Conservative government ditched the predecessor cheque scheme (then labelled family allowances), in part because of the administrative costs.

But in politics, consistency is invariably trumped by popularity, and it was to be expected that the same folks who brought us the GST would be the first to reduce it, after the other folks who promised to kill it kept it in place at the full seven per cent.

The name of the game is to get elected, and in Mr. Harper's case the objective is clearly to win a majority by picking up a lot more seats in Quebec (whatever the cost).

Another example of the new government's wiliness came in its decision to give a special break to parents whose children are involved in organized sports.

There's no doubt this move will find favour among local parents who must spend huge amounts to equip kids and travel with them to rep hockey and lacrosse games often an hour's drive away.

But is the new $500 allowance really needed for all parents whose kids are involved in any type of sport? We certainly doubt that children enrolled in houseleague soccer cost their parents more than a fraction of the costs involved in other sports. And, while we're at it, why is this special tax break restricted to sports?

We suspect parents of children who take ballet or music lessons face similar costs, yet are to get no similar help from Harper & Co.

We'd love to see the government's explanation for this discrimination.