Though a lot of information about the new budget has already been released, there are sure to be some surprises and of course, interesting discussions taking place throughout the day. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will deliver his budget speech in the House of Commons at roughly 4 PM EST (2 PM MST) today. All the major Canadian media outlets will have coverage, and some even have unique online coverage too.
Here’s how to track Budget Day 2009 online:
- Twitter Search. The best place to get reaction from Canadians in real-time.
- FriendFeed. Lots of great links being posted there.
- The Globe and Mail. They’ve got a really great portal aggregating all of their content together, plus they’re live-blogging the event starting at 3 PM EST.
- National Post. They also have full coverage and a live-blog that starts at 3 PM EST.
- Some Twitter accounts to follow (in addition to the ones I mentioned here): @cbcnews, @cbcradio, @NPpolitics, @stephen_taylor
- Only the Conservative and NDP columns seem to be updating regularly, but I still like the premise behind elect-o-pinion.ca.
And a few other interesting links:
- Dave asked his Twitter followers why Canada still has a Governor General and got a number of interesting responses.
- CBC has a map showing what other governments around the world have done to boost their economies.
- Stephen Taylor wrote a funny post on naming the budget. I like “Yes We Can (Too)” heh.
- Google News aggregates all articles on the topic together. As I write this, there are about 430 articles related to the budget.
- Cool graph from The Globe: From deficit to surplus, and back again.
Here in Edmonton, the federal wish list comes in at $2.4 billion. I’m sure the capital notebook blog and Dave Cournoyer will have more on today’s news from a local perspective.
It’ll be interesting to see how the day plays out! I’ll update the post if I come across any more useful links – leave me a comment if you have one to suggest!
UPDATE: There’s a word cloud of Flaherty’s speech available here, and you can read the full text of the speech here.
UPDATE2: Here’s a PDF of the budget, courtesy of The Globe and Mail.
UPDATE3: The official Budget 2009 site also has the PDF and some other information, but is very slow.
UPDATE4: A number of responses from organizations (CUPE, CFIB, etc.) are available at Canadian Newswire.
MasterMaq's Blog 
You forgot cbc.ca http://ur1.ca/16na
Well I wanted to include them, but I didn’t want to link to a specific article. Why they don’t have a Budget 2009 page like The Globe and National Post do is beyond me.
They do. See column on the right hand side.
But I see your point. Don’t know why CBCNews.ca has it under the sub-header “Money” instead of ‘Budget 2009’ (or even “CANADA”) for that matter.
Blame it on the website designer, or whoever it is that’s working behind the scenes…
Yah, that’s the problem – the “Federal Budget” banner on the right side should be clickable!
This is some great info. Thanks.