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It is, at every turn, designed to showcase the government’s differences from its predecessor — or indeed, predecessors. If it is impossible to imagine a Harper government putting such emphasis on the environment and diversity, it is equally difficult to imagine Chrétien signing on for electoral reform or whatever it is Trudeau is planning on doing with the Senate.

If much of it is familiar from the platform, it is nevertheless a useful exercise, both to see where the government’s priorities lie and for the overall impression it conveys. In a word, it is, as the speech itself confesses, ambitious.

It may perhaps not have been quite as apparent, amid the hurly-burly of the campaign, but this is a radical government. Expanding the Canada Pension Plan, pricing carbon, reforming the electoral system, adopting all 94 recommendations of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, combining four different child benefits into one $23-billion plan: whatever else may be said about it, this is indeed “real change.”

Much of the new government’s agenda will depend on cooperation from the provinces: the carbon pricing plan, CPP expansion, a new health accord, among a long list. Much else will depend upon the state of the federal government’s finances.

Or would, if it showed evidence of being bound by any discernible budget constraint. The $10-billion deficits for two years that were the centrepiece of its fiscal plan during the campaign seem to have become rather larger ones for longer since: the parliamentary budget officer has said the projections on which the plan were based are billions of dollars out of step with reality, while the finance minister has pointedly refused to recommit to the original $10-billion deficit limit.