It has been great to bask in the glow of these superbly successful Vancouver Olympics, but we should brace ourselves for a cold dash of reality later this week when Parliament resumes with a throne speech and budget on consecutive days.

Unless each of these political events is divorced from the real world, the heady elation of all those Olympic golds will be overtaken by record deficits and difficult political decisions, that other national sport.

Still, the Canadian performance in Vancouver provides us with some direction for what should be Ottawa's longer term planning.

For, despite the galvanizing effect of the men's hockey win on Sunday, or even the stirring gold medal win by the women's hockey team a few days earlier, the best example comes from the other 24 medals Canadian athletes won.

It is that perseverance pays off — if it comes with a plan.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper watches the women's curling final in Vancouver in February 2010. What podiums can he own? (Robert Bukaty/Associated Press)

After all, we are meant to win in hockey. It is our game and anything but a gold would have been a huge letdown for either the men's or women's team.

In fairness, the women who overcame their American nemeses are much closer to other Canadian Olympians than their millionaire counterparts on the men's team.

But the Canadian lesson from the Olympics is really the same whether you are a long-track speed skater, an ice dancer or a mogul-loving skier. Or Sidney Crosby for that matter.

Success comes with a plan. With financing. And with the commitment and desire to work hard toward a particular goal.

The right boost

In professional hockey, those results are seen every year. Today, the players on all the top Olympic teams come out of the NHL or the professional leagues in Europe and Russia where it's the private sector investment and the financial incentives for players and owners that drive everyone's efforts.

That was what the Own the Podium program was all about for those other Olympic sports, a government commitment to spend money and find the corporate sponsors who bought into the plan and would open their wallets as well.

The results showed the plan works. Given the right boost, Canadians can do as well as anyone when it comes to world-class achievement.

So, the question follows: If this kind of investment can work in sports, can it work in other fields, too?

Why can't Canadians, for example, have a number of world-class universities? Why can't our health system be top grade as well as universally accessible?

Why can't we have a cleaner energy industry to help power our economy and create the revenues that both the private and public sectors need to develop and sustain all of the public goods we all desire?

An Olympian test

The Olympics gave us a couple of great weeks of national pride and excitement. But a commitment to "Own the Podium" as one of the top performing countries in the world would give us that pride and feeling of success 12 months a year.

The throne speech that will open Parliament on Wednesday may well allude to these objectives.

But the real test will come the next day in the budget. Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty have said there will be no big surprises in that document.

In fact the most interesting portion is likely to be the plan to try to return the country to surpluses after five years of projected deficits.

Flaherty has said the plan is to cut spending after the current fiscal year and then let the economy grow itself back into the black.

The problem with that plan is that most economists today don't think it will work. They feel that the economy won't grow at the rate the government is counting on and that draconian spending cuts or increased taxes will be needed to balance Ottawa's books.

Either way, it is going to be difficult in the coming years to find the kind of own-the-podium money Canada will need to raise its game in health, education and the like.

It is going to take both private and public sector commitments to make that happen. And it will take leadership, leadership that only a federal government can provide.

We now know what it takes to reach the podium. But if we want Canadians to buy into the hard work that lies ahead, there is going to have to be a plan they can really believe in.