Canadian News
I know, I've hardly posted anything on Canada for a long time.
I have registered at the Globe and Mail, but they tell me I have to accept cookies to read a lot of articles. I don't particularly want to register for the Toronto Star. I read the paper copy most mornings.
So, link-free: Prime Minister Martin has resolved an issue with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia by ... spending a lot of money. These two provinces have always been "have-not" provinces--meaning they get equalization funding from the federal government, transferred from the "have" provinces. (Ontario and Alberta have been the only consistent "have" provinces for many years). The two "N's" are starting to make some revenue from off-shore oil and gas. Guess what? They don't want to suffer a so-called "claw back" of equalization. They want to keep all their equalization while also making the revenue which might ... eventually ... make them have provinces.
At the provincial level, this is like Clinton's obsession about the Earned Income Increment--if in moving from welfare to a job, you are immediately taxed on your wages back to the living standard you had on welfare, then there is no (or little) incentive to leave welfare. But surely provinces won't slide back into having no oil and gas industry? Why should the rest of Canada keep paying them the full amount based on their old low income, even when they now have a higher income?
Anyway, Martin paid. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is mad. He has said Trudeau never would have done this (or he should have said that), so Martin has said the great premiers of Ontario never would have whined so much about the price of building national unity.
One piece in one of those papers that require registration said there is now a pattern with Martin--postpone a decision until the good options are more difficult, if they are available at all, and then try to buy his way out of trouble. He did it with the latest health care accord--where supposedly he gave more autonomy to the provinces than Trudeau ever would have. On missile defence, he may have missed the opportunity to support Bush's plan with relatively little controversy--now he faces a lot more controversy.
Chretien could make quick, tough decisions. He could also procrastinate--but if he did, you could be reasonably sure it wasn't his blood that was dripping on the floor.
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