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Nevertheless, Premier Wall has a point. Redirecting money toward federal building projects would be a boon to the nation’s infrastructure. It would also go a long way toward making public spending more accountable, as the government that collects the funds would also be responsible for spending them.

It is difficult to see how provinces can remain autonomous in any meaningful sense when many of them are so dependent on another level of government for their money. The Constitution Act, 1867, delineates clear areas of federal, provincial and shared jurisdiction. The ever-expanding realm of federal-provincial partnerships has jeopardized both the letter and spirit of this division of powers.

Yes, the federal government collects more revenues than it needs to fund its own programs, while areas of provincial responsibility tend to be underfunded by provincial taxes. But this merely indicates that the federal government should be collecting fewer taxes, while some of the provinces should be collecting more. Diverting a portion of the current equalization payments to tax relief could do just that.

Indeed, we are constitutionally obligated “to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.” But it is not necessarily unreasonable to ask people in provinces that have overspent and have weak economies to pay a little more; nor is it unreasonable to ask governments that have mismanaged their economies to find ways of becoming more efficient.