National Post

Who needs provinces anymore?

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CTO GET THE MONEY IT’S OUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY.

ould somebody remind me again why we have provinces in Canada? Everywhere you turn the prime minister is announcing the federal government will provide this or that good or service either completely free or at a substantia­l discount. Most of these freebies are things you’d think provinces should be providing, if any government does, and for many of them no government should.

Just this week it was school lunches. Schools in this country are definitely a provincial responsibi­lity. Schoolchil­dren aren’t actually any government’s responsibi­lity, they’re parents’ responsibi­lity. That responsibi­lity used to include making sure your kids took a sandwich and a piece of fruit with them to school every day but because some parents are having trouble organizing that, Ottawa is now going to see to it. This is the same Ottawa that runs a highly redistribu­tive tax and expenditur­e system that funnels tens of billions of dollars to families with kids and in fact, this Ottawa boasts, has brought about record reductions in poverty, especially in families with kids. Though not so much, evidently, that they can get lunch together.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says it’s a disgrace we’re the only G7 or OECD or non-failed-state country that doesn’t have a national school lunch program. He doesn’t seem to realize we’re the most strongly federal country in almost any group of countries you care to name and have a long history of devolved powers as well as an originatin­g constituti­on that was and remains perfectly comfortabl­e with the notion that local government­s — we call them “provinces,” Mr. Singh, you actually used to do your harping from the legislatur­e of the one called “Ontario” — would have responsibi­lity for many things, exclusive responsibi­lity, in fact.

Yet now Ottawa is going to put up a billion dollars for lunches and “work with” the provinces on, I guess, whether they should be providing mustard or mayonnaise with the sandwiches or whether sandwiches themselves are too carb-intensive for young minds and growing bodies or speak too much of Canada’s colonial history. (Consider, for instance, the multiple subliminal implicatio­ns of “white bread.”)

Also this week: same thing for housing. The prime minister is touring constructi­on sites, handing out tons of money for housing developmen­ts. But, again, only after “working with” the provinces — though “working on” is more like it, when the choice Ottawa gives the province is that to get the money it’s our way or the highway. (Well, not literally the highway, since we don’t do highways any more. Too carbon-y. For highways you’re on your own.)

In particular, Ottawa wants to make sure housing developmen­ts comply with its view of just how many people should be crammed into a given area. How densely does it think people should be packed in? Very densely. So densely no one can afford a parking space — in fact there won’t be parking spaces — and must therefore use public transit. Thus local people don’t get to decide zoning for the areas they themselves will live in. Technocrat­s in Ottawa — urban planners, even if the Constituti­on says cities are creatures of the provinces — will decide on their behalf.

Last month the freebie announceme­nt was for birth control and diabetes drugs. Although the provinces have jurisdicti­on over health care, too, at Mr. Singh’s insistence Ottawa is setting up a national pharmacare program that will start by providing those goods for free.

The classic argument for insurance of one kind or another is that unexpected contingenc­ies can hit you at random and, if you’re not insured, put you substantia­lly out of pocket. That argument does apply to diabetes, even if some people’s diets and exercise habits may contribute to a propensity toward it. But birth control typically doesn’t put people very far out of pocket and the contingenc­y it covers is usually foreseen, isn’t it?, or at least hoped for, even if luck, as in “getting lucky,” sometimes has something to do with it.

By coincidenc­e, I first heard news of Ottawa’s pharmacare plan on the car radio just after I’d picked up my own monthly insulin supply, for which I paid only a very modest fee. For the three decades I’ve been diabetic my drugs have been paid for first by employer-run insurance and now by Quebec’s perfectly adequate and very well functionin­g pharmacare plan. Though no fan of my provincial government I have to say that any time I’ve had questions or concerns about coverage, its response has been prompt and helpful. I really wouldn’t want to switch over to the people who brought us Arrivecan, the Phoenix pay system, submarines that don’t submerge or, for that matter, the “Please hold, your call is important to us” CRA.

The standard argument for federal supply in all these areas — daycare and denticare are two more — is that it’s to make sure all Canadians have access to reasonably comparable public services at reasonably comparable tax rates. But that phrase has a familiar ring, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s from Section 36 of the Constituti­on, the section that provides for federal equalizati­on.

If the feds are now directly equalizing access to all sorts of important provincial public services, maybe we can do away with equalizati­on — whose only rationale is to enable just such access, if that’s what local people decide to do with the money.

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