Private philanthropic organizations also act in behalf of citizens in a public trust model (and are legally bound to answer to the public via their Board of Directors) and tend to deliver higher quality programs than government bureaucracies can afford to. Some governments do a great job of encouraging philanthropic contribution through tax breaks (i.e. changing capital gains taxes that will allow charities to realize more than a billion dollars to their bottom line in the next fiscal year).

On this matter, the U.S. has done a much better job of encouraging citizens to be philanthropists (through every tax bracket-not just the rich). Making private contributions appeals to man’s better nature and bulwarks civil society, rather than reducing people’s dignity by reducing them to their least common denominator and live off of the government dole. Canada can follow the U.S.’s example of encouraging more private contribution and let the government spend more time on governing rather than babysitting its citizens.

The feds should agree to reduce their revenue, namely their rate of income tax, so that the provinces can increase theirs’. As far as I understand, the federal government has the authority under the constitution to raise money by what ever means, whereas the provinces are more restricted, income tax being their most significant source of revenue. Canadians are taxed tremendously already, so any unilateral move by one level of government to increase their rates of taxation are going to get noticed big time, and it’s the kind of bad PR a government tries to avoid—so it does require balls.

But when the federal government plays hardball, justifying their high rate of taxation to empower them as the guardians of “national standards” and “equalisation”, provincial governments have historically had a real uphill battle in public opinion—especially when they are plagued by their own scandals and what not. I think, however, given a general disatisfaction with the federal government right now, recent Liberal scandals, and the perpetual controversy over health care in Canada, things may be swinging to the provinces this time around.

Let’s hope anyway—and in terms of real reform to federal/provincial taxation rates! But I guess we’ll see …

If provinces want to flex their constitutional muscles, then why don’t they simply raise the money themselves? Because they don’t have the balls to do it. This is why provinces will always need the Federal Government and will always be complaining for more cash.

As for Rempel’s point on Harper’s sympathies to Quebec, his making gains in Quebec and Ontario because of such sympathies, I think there is a real divergence in how Quebec and Ontario perceive such sympathies. Decentralising the federal government doesn’t necessarily translate into “being sympathetic to Quebec” in Ontario, or it doesn’t necessarily give on Ontarians much comfort. For Ontarians, decentralisation threatens the regime they think best maintains national unity.

I think it is safe to argue that Ontario’s political culture hasn’t demonstrated that it appreciates the necessity of federalism to the same extent that other provinces do (This would be an interesting case study anyway.). A big, rich, and powerful federal government seems to be Ontario’s knee-jerk fix for keeping their Canada together. Outside Ontario, big federal government translates in two ways: in the short term it comes to the rescue on various provincial short-comings, but over the longer term big federal government drains provincial self-respect and promotes a culture of defeat. The federal government is expected to come to the rescue every time because these provinces aren’t self-sufficient, and THIS is the message sent to these provinces EVERY time the federal government comes to the rescue. Ontarians are quite comfortable having the federal government play this role because they run it and they’re historically the self-sufficient ones.

After Gomery and AdScam, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Quebecers turned favourably to Harper this past election because they made the connection between decentralisation and their self-respect. I have yet to see any indication that Ontarians understand this angst for self-respect therefore decentralisation in the same way, say, Albertans or Newfoundlanders do. So I’m not sure Harper is ever going to gain much in Ontario by being sympathetic to Quebec with a program of decentralisation.

And as for the quote from Gauthier on how Harper appears to be sympathetic to Quebec: I can’t think of a single thing that would help Harper in Quebec and Ontario more.

As for “whoring” himself to a separatist party, last I checked the Bloc MPs were democratically elected representatives of their constituents in Quebec. Apart from bad optics in Ontario, there is nothing wrong with working with the Bloc to see through an agenda of provincial rights, one that every province should favour. The only difficulty is that Ontarians have never fully appreciated genuine federalism, opting rather for the soft language of federalism and a strong, overbearing central government run by them.