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The Harper government, so far, has been pretty much a disappointment money-wise to the so-called "Big Six" cultural organizations in Toronto that a few years ago embarked on an ambitious series of enhancements to the places they call home.

But they've not given up hope, at least not officially. And with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty set to deliver another federal budget tomorrow, hope once again is stirring, if not exactly springing, in the ranks of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Royal Ontario Museum, the National Ballet School, the Canadian Opera Company and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art.

Will the 2008-2009 budget, they wonder, finally bring forth the $49-million "top-up" for which the Big Six have been lobbying since mid-2005 when Paul Martin's Liberal Party was in power? Or will it prove, as Peggy Lee sang in Is That All There Is, "the final disappointment"?

Last week, Charles Baillie, the AGO president, said he thinks the Conservatives may finally have achieved what he once called "conceptual acceptance" of what the Big Six are asking.

Until as recently as two months ago, the government seemed to view the $49-million request as a way to cover what it deemed "cost overruns" incurred by the institutions, and not, as Baillie likes to put it, "an investment in, and a celebration of, success." Indeed, in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail in December, the communications director for Lawrence Cannon, minister responsible for infrastructure and communities, said "any further infrastructure funding to these institutions would need to be considered in the context of a request for funding for new projects, not cost overruns of existing projects."

Now, Baillie observes, "the federal government seems to accept that they are not being asked to fund cost overruns" but rather to acknowledge, concretely, the hundreds of millions of dollars in donations the Big Six have received from all sorts of individuals, foundations, families and businesses, including financier Michael Lee-Chin's famous $30-million gift to the ROM as well as the late Kenneth Thomson's $70-million cash contribution to Frank Gehry's revamp of the AGO. Baillie himself has donated, along with his wife, $7-million to the AGO.

Costs indeed have gone up in the last three or four years, he acknowledges - but at "roughly 4 per cent per year, [they] compare favourably with any projects, public or private." Moreover, it's only been since 2005, when construction on all the projects was under way, that all the institutions got a firmer handle on what things were going to cost and what ambitions seemed achievable. When the Ontario and federal governments first committed to the cause, in 2002, the design for the ROM, for instance, was not much advanced beyond the crystalline shapes architect Daniel Libeskind had sketched on his now-famous paper napkin.

At 68, Baillie is the very model of Establishment probity, with an MBA from Harvard and, until his retirement a few years ago, a lengthy stint as chairman and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group. President of the AGO since 2002, he's been the designated point man on, and spokesperson for, the cultural institutions' efforts to loosen the federal purse-strings.

Last November he and three other colleagues travelled to Ottawa to plead their case anew before Flaherty, whose other cabinet job is as the minister responsible for the Greater Toronto Area. A couple of weeks later, Flaherty had another encounter with Baillie, albeit a brief one, this time at the Forest Hill mansion of film producer Robert Lantos.

A few weeks later, Baillie acknowledged the "top-up" did seem to be "on Flaherty's mind, but I don't know how seriously. ... We seem to have a dreadful time making much impact there." In fact, Baillie said, "if we don't get ... a good signal from our point of view from the federal government" early in 2008, "I think we'll be pretty discouraged. It's hard to be optimistic."

The saga of renovations and expansions began in the spring of 2002 when Jean Chrétien's federal Liberals and Ernie Eves's Ontario Conservatives announced they'd invest more than $220-million in new or improved facilities for seven cultural institutions (including Roy Thomson Hall) in Canada's largest city. This in turn prompted the unprecedented outpouring of support from the public - an outpouring now estimated to be more than a half-billion dollars and so unprecedented, in fact, that by early 2006, government support was much less than the 40 per cent Queen's Park and Ottawa originally agreed would be their maximum contribution.

It was this factor that generated the idea of the "top-up," which, if realized, would see the Ontario government, in tandem with Ottawa, each chipping in another $98-million to see all the construction through to completion while forestalling any excessive borrowing from financial institutions. At a reception in late 2005 to honour retiring Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, an enthusiastic speech by Liberal cabinet minister (and future leadership candidate) Joe Volpe convinced not a few attendees that, in the words of one, "Ottawa's going to give us a cheque really soon." Ontario's McGuinty government came through shortly thereafter with a $49-million investment.

But the federal Conservatives, elected to govern in January, 2006, with no MPs from Toronto proper, balked, arguing Volpe's stance was less about commitment than pre-election grandstanding.