Fixing the Fiscal Imbalance

In Canada, we have this thing called a fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces. The feds are rolling in money. Some of the provinces -- the more vocal among them -- are pinching pennies to keep the home fires burning.

It's driving us to distraction. We don't know what to do about it.

Well, I have an idea.

Let's stick a fork in the provinces and draw up something more appropriate for the modern age.

Look at them. They're all over the map.

You have your Prince Edward Island, which is approximately the size of a postage stamp with the population of a small city. Then you have your Ontario, which has the population of a mid-size nation and the geography of Asia Minor.

It is no longer fair, equitable or even close to workable.

This may have worked back in colonial days, when the overseers from England ran the joint out of their fancy homes in Toronto.

Who cared what the provinces looked like on a map? Nobody lived "out there" but Indians, French-speaking half-breeds, Ukranian farmers and a few outlaw prospectors. You could easily sit in downtown Toronto, sipping tea and eating biscuits, while you enacted laws that regulated the beaver harvest by Cree trappers at the edges of the known universe. It was good fun and excellent training for upper-crust lads who would go on to rule Britannia in more interesting climes.

But these times are not those times.

The provinces, as they were constituted by the founding elites, are now dysfunctional. It's time they were erased, the boundaries redrawn and the whole thing rethought.

Canada would do quite nicely with one strong central government and a bunch of empowered muncipal governments. Perhaps we could look at some kind of regional administrative units, but they should certainly make geographical and political sense. People should be able to travel from one side of them to the other without having to book the dog into the kennel and redirect their mail.

Today, in the 21st century, the provinces do nothing but sop up limited resources, generate blowhard politicians and get up everyone's nose. They govern nothing but empty spaces, then contrive to lord it over the "lower tier" towns and cities that look after the real issues where real people live and work.

Apart from oddballs in Quebec, no sane person ever went to war for a province. No one ever died under a provincial flag or served in a provincial army. No one stands for their anthems or gets dewy eyed about their triumphs at the Olympics. They are nothing but colonial-era administrative districts. They cost us an arm and a leg. They spend their days doing mischief. And they hold back the development of our country.

The fiscal imbalance -- if it exists -- can be easily fixed. Just put a fork in these anachronistic provinces and let's get on with building a country.