Canada's budget passed recently, and at a much later time in the year than normal. Join us as we converse the main points of the budget.

As with everything, there was a lot of politics involved in passing the budget. We explore the floor crossing and resignation announcement and some of the other ins and outs of what happened leading up to the budget.

We received a number of questions over the past while, and we spend this whole episode going through them and answering them one by one.

Some of the question topics include:

- clarification on public sector vs. private sector wages

- Alberta MLA salaries increasing in 2012

- several clarifying questions around the teachers being legislated back to work

- the purpose of Question Period in the Legislature/House of Commons

Thank you everyone for listening and especially those that take time to send in questions and trust us to answer them openly and honestly. We appreciate you all.

As with all things, we look to take a balanced and fair look at any issue in exploring both sides. This episode is no different as we take on the heavy task of analyzing the public sector unrest here in Alberta. Many of the issues in Alberta are also being seen across Canada. We explore also the big issue here in Alberta as just this past week, teachers were ordered back to work after 3 weeks of striking by the Government of Alberta with the use of the Notwithstanding Clause within the constitution.

It was only right that we start with looking at inflation and what causes it, as that is a major factor into why unions are fighting so hard for, among other things, higher wages. We move into the public sector union unrest and then of course discuss in particular the interaction between the Alberta Teachers Association and the Government of Alberta. As part of this we explore a bit about what the Notwithstanding Clause is and what its consequences are in this instance.

We hope you find this informative and enlightening as we dive into this hot topic.