Anyone around the Ontario legislature one day recently must have thought Barack Obama at least was on the premises.

Enough police, armed and in body armour, to rid this city's streets of crime were patrolling the grounds, watching from cars and standing at entrances and in corridors. The legislature's regular security officers do not carry weapons.

Police were packed most densely around a secondfloor room, helping an equal army of civil servants make sure only reporters and photographers with proper accreditation were allowed in.

The government had the journalists pledge they would not take in electronic equipment through which they could pass information to the outside world and warned direly any who disobeyed would be barred from such events for life.

Once inside, journalists were given copies of the budget outlining the government's spending plans for the year, so they could write news stories, columns and editorials to send to their newspapers and TV and radio stations the moment they were allowed out.

They were escorted by police to washrooms and back and not set free finally until 4 p.m., when Finance Minster Dwight Duncan began reading the budget in the legislature.

The Liberal government put on as big a show of security as if it was protecting the military plan to defend the western world or recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But it was all a hoax and sham, because Premier Dalton McGuinty and unidentified government 'sources' had leaked all of the budget that mattered in dribs and drabs over several weeks, as surely as if they had dropped in every home and left a copy. There were no budget secrets left to guard.

This broke tradition, because governments normally kept budgets secret until they are read in the legislature. One reason is they may affect stock prices and should not be made public until markets have closed.

Another is that governments generally have recognized they should present budgets, one of the two most important documents they produce annually along with the Throne Speech, first in the legislature, out of respect for MPPs.

Both rules are ingrained in the British parliamentary system, on which Canada's is based. A British equivalent of finance minister, who made a brief remark to a reporter that indicated he planned to raise taxes on cigarettes, was gone faster than a puff of smoke.

Federal and provincial governments have been forced to unveil budgets ahead of schedule, because parts became known, and discoveries even of scraps of budgets in printer's garbage have produced furious recriminations.

The tradition that budgets should be disclosed first to MPPs in the legislature was broken once, in 2003 by a Progressive Conservative government, which unveiled one in a Brampton auto factory, trying to remove itself as far as possible from opposition parties' criticisms.

McGuinty said at that time "it is the undoubted right of the legislative assembly to be the first recipient of the budget."

Times have changed, however. The Liberals leaked parts of this budget ahead of time for political gains. One is that bad news (and this was mostly bad), spread out over weeks can have less impact than the same amount announced all on one day.

The Liberals also countered each item of bad news they leaked with a good one. Among examples, they indicated they would harmonize the province's sales tax with federal taxes, which generally increased the tax burden, but softened the blow by almost doubling benefits for children in low-income families.

Business felt it was being left out, so McGuinty fast-forwarded a plan easing corporate taxes and every chamber of commerce branch had prepared a letter by budget day defending this one as fair.

When average taxpayers started worrying, McGuinty pulled another rabbit from the budget showing he would send each $1,000.

The Liberals have broken fair and well-established parliamentary rules so they could influence votes, but so far few have noticed and they are getting away with it.