As the Whitehorse business community took a long lunch over lasagna and caesar salad at the High Country Inn on Wednesday, Premier Dennis Fentie rattled off tens of millions of dollars' worth of government spending aimed at keeping the Yukon economy strong through the coming year of global recession.

There wasn't much new to be learned at the lunch, attended by about 150 members of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce.

As chamber president Rick Karp said after the speech, most of what Fentie had to say was a more detailed repeat of his address at the Partnering for Success summit held last month.

Which is not to say the business community was disappointed.

"It's a wonderful budget," Karp said of the $1.003-billion spending package that was officially tabled in the legislature this afternoon.

"With the economic climate as it is, to have a budget like this, how could anyone be anything but pleased?"

This will be the Yukon's biggest budget ever, while maintaining the surplus position the territory has enjoyed for the past six years.

The only concern, Karp said, is that the more than $100 million worth of investments Fentie mentioned yesterday will be responsibly spent and that enough of it will trickle down to small businesses.

"It's good news about the deputy minister's committee," Karp said, referring to Fentie's pledge to create a spending watchdog group made up of the government's top bureaucrats.

The premier outlined six major areas of spending to the chamber: transportation infrastructure, marketing, economic diversification, health and social security and the environment.

He brought each one back to the business community and reminded his audience several times that the Yukon has so far weathered the financial storm well - and that he plans to keep it that way.

Karp agreed with that assessment, although somewhat more pragmatically.

"A lot of developers do rely on southern money, and that money's not there so some things have been put on hold," he said of how Yukon businesses are holding up.

"... But on the other hand, with a budget like this, it's positive - how can it not be? - and it will shield us from what's going on down south."

Questions from the audience received mostly straightforward answers. His government supports the creation of the Mackenzie Valley and Alaska Highway pipelines, Fentie said, but both are largely beyond the Yukon's control.

"We don't want the oil and gas reserves in the northern Yukon stranded," he said, adding he was counting on TransCanada Pipelines to keep the Yukon in the loop.

One audience member asked about the possibility of getting a million dollars of seed money for the Fireweed Fund, which would invest Yukon money in new Yukon-owned and -based businesses.

Fentie responded by saying that much more than $1 million is needed to get the fund started and that help from the federal government would be critical to its success.

"The federal government are not willing to participate," he said, "so we've set that aside and focused on other projects."

He added that until the economic seas have calmed and "the banks are lending to each other," such a fund will likely stay on ice.

The Yukon Party has revealed much of the budget over the past severaal weeks, through press releases and public announcements. The nuts and bolts of the government's financial plan emerged in

the legislature this afternoon.