Last week The Hook reported on the Fraser Institute’s angry criticism of the Conservative budget. Now the left has opened up.

On its website, the Canadian Union of Public Employees has published a critical overview plus a report card on three key areas, plus detailed analysis of ten major topics.

CUPE argues that the budget has actually slipped in the provisos in last November’s economic update -- the update that nearly brought down the government:

Hidden, but still included in this budget are the cuts to transfers, controls on program spending, weakening pay equity for federal employees and the privatization plans announced in Harper’s disastrous November Economic and Fiscal Update. This includes limiting growth of transfers under the Equalization program and selling off over $10 billion in federal public assets over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Economics Forum has posted a Gender analysis of Budget 2009:

“Budget 2009 not only fails to target the most vulnerable, but it seems to have been carefully crafted to exclude women from as much of the $64 billion in new deficit-financed spending and tax cuts as possible...”

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.