Hours before the Conservatives unveiled a rehashed budget, opposition leaders questioned the government on its handling of the Quebec flooding and the Libyan file in a distinctly toned-down question period.
NDP Leader Jack Layton's first question as opposition leader was notably in French -- a nod to his new, large Quebec caucus – and asked if the government would be willing to work with the rest of the House of Commons.
"In the election, Canadians voted for change and they clearly wanted Parliament to work together," he said in English, adding his party has pledged to end heckling in the House.
House Leader Peter Van Loan responded that the government will be moving forward with its new majority mandate as laid out during the election campaign.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will release a slightly updated version of the budget later Monday, after the original fiscal blueprint died on the floor when the election was called in March.
With the Conservatives' new majority government status, the budget is expected to pass with ease when it goes to a vote in the House of Commons.
Flaherty has said Monday's budget will be virtually identical to the March document, with just a few key changes.
Among the differences: the budget will begin to phase out the $2 per-vote subsidy for political parties and will include $2.2 billion to pay for the harmonized sales tax agreement Ottawa hopes to reach with Quebec.
"Apart from that this is pretty much the March 22 budget pulled out of his briefcase and tossed on the table of the country," said Craig Oliver, CTV's chief political correspondent and co-host of Question Period.
The budget is expected to include $400 million to bring back the home retrofit program that was brought in to stimulate the economy in the wake of the 2008 recession.
It will also include $300 million in funding for low-income senior pensions.
Finally, the budget is expected to outline the government's intention to eliminate the deficit by 2014-2015 -- a year earlier than originally planned.
"To do that they're going to have to make billions of dollars in cuts," Oliver told CTV's Canada AM.
"We're not going to see any of that in this budget. The government is starting work now on figuring out what low hanging fruit is left out there, but most people don't think there is very much."
It's believed the Conservatives will have to cut $4 billion per year in spending in order to achieve that goal.
However, it's unclear where those cuts will be made. The government has suggested it will save money by streamlining how departments operate, rather than making significant cuts to programs and services.
On Sunday, NDP Leader Jack Layton said it's "just not going to be possible" for the federal government to eliminate the deficit in three years without any deep cuts to programs and services.
Layton, who now faces the government as Opposition leader in the House of Commons, said his priority is to get specifics from the government on what services could be targeted to help reduce the deficit.
"They said, 'We won't touch the essential services,' but they had a very small list of what those essential services would be," he told CTV's Question Period.
