Claire Hoy Federal equalization program IS broken Back in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, when Ontario was the engine that kept Canada’s economy moving, few Ontario taxpayers seemed to care how much cash was leaving the province to prop up the rest of the country.

After all, the story went, Ontarians were not parochial me-firsters like the other provinces. No, no. Ontario premiers in particular where the power brokers, the leaders who rose above parochial considerations and acted not just on what was good for Ontario, but what was good for Canada.

The fact that, at the time, what was good for Canada was generally good for Ontario as well - at least in economic terms - was conveniently overlooked.

Times change.

Since those days, of course, Ontario’s economic dominance has virtually disappeared, while the West in particular has experienced massive growth both in economic and political terms.

Not that our current Premier, Dalton McGuinty, has noticed, mind you. He continues to spend on par with former premier Bill Davis - who rarely saw an issue which couldn’t be supported with a government cheque.

The difference, of course, is that when Davis was premier (1971-85), Ontario had lots of money. Not so today.

Which brings us, in a runabout way, to the current gum flapping emanating both from within and without Quebec, where nothing the rest of the country does is ever good enough, and nothing Quebec itself does is ever seen as contributing to its’ problems.

Ontario taxpayers - and now moreso those from the West - have consistently paid money to Quebec to finance programs which those of us outside that province can’t even afford to hope for.

Leftist activists, for example, have long pointed to Quebec’s extraordinarily cheap daycare program as something the rest of us should emulate, without a second thought to the fact that a)- the rest of us are helping pay for it and b)- because of this and similar programs, Quebec has by far the worst debt situation in Canada and among the worst in the industrialized world.

Quebec has routinely spent beyond its’ means and has just as routinely attempted to play on its’ cultural and linguistic heritage to shame the rest of us into bailing it out from its own fiscal folly.

There is no good reason - none at all - why this country should not revamp our current equalization program, where the supposed richer provinces help the supposed poorer provinces provide services which, in theory, are on par with each other.

This would be okay if, let’s say, Quebecers were enjoying the same level of services that Ontarians are.

And, back in the days when Ontario had lots of cash, they kind of did.

But that is no longer true. Quebecers - continuing to build up their debt yet receive far and away the biggest chunk of equalization payments - currently

enjoy numerous levels of social service which we can only dream about.

Mind you, if McGuinty weren’t himself prone to spend so far above the province’s means, it would make it easier for him to become indignant over Quebec’s profligate spending.

It remains perhaps McGuinty’s most shameful legacy that, under his watch, our province has officially fallen to “have not” status in terms of the equalization program.

Even so, Quebec continues merrily along its freespending road - pretending to cut back on that by bringing in some modest health user fees - and the rest of the country continues to pretend that the equalization program is not broken.

It is.

But you can bet that the first premier who stands up to complain about it will be accused, by Quebec, of being anti-French. Which also means, alas, that we can’t expect our federal leaders - any of them - to raise the issue.

And so we continue as a country pretending that things aren’t as out of whack as they are and that we can really afford to keep pumping untold billions of tax dollars into never-ending social experiments, whether they actually are a social benefit or not. Is it really best for children, for example, to warehouse them in government-run daycares and thus discourage parental upbringing?

Not necessarily.

But that’s not a debate we’re ever going to have as long as we continue to prop up Quebec’s completely outrageous childcare program - a program which offers excessively cheap care to parents whether they are themselves in the lower income brackets or the scions of Westmount millionaires.

Clearly, there is something wrong with this picture.

If only some politician had the guts to fix it.