While the highlights of the 1999 throne speech filled a 15-page booklet in each of the country's official languages, yesterday's fit in a one-page brochure with French on one side and English on the other. And that still left a third of the space for a glossy picture of the Canadian flag on each side. The only pieces of legislation MPs are guaranteed to be allowed to chew on are warmed-up leftovers from the previous Parliament.

If anything else substantial is going to be coming down the pipeline, [Chretien] is not really telling. Thus, Canadians who puzzled over the Prime Minister's reasons for seeking another term last fall are unlikely to find much of an answer in his government's throne speech.

Among the meatier sections of this slim speech is a commitment of the Chretien government to bring Canada further into the knowledge economy. But the speech conveniently glosses over the fact that the same government relinquished its training responsibilities to the provinces only a few years ago.