Earlier:

Minimum Max a conservative leader?

Note that small “c”; let the provinces be provinces, let the feds be feds, and let the voters know who is truly responsible for what–so they can at least have the opportunity to decide intelligently. Now from Paul at Celestial Junk:

More Max … floating trial balloons for the boss … or going roque?

Maverick Max went rogue again in a Toronto speech on Wednesday by advocating Ottawa get out of transfer payments to provinces while giving legislatures more tax room to finance the health, social welfare and education services they are constitutionally obliged to deliver.

For Jim Flaherty, who rolled out a blueprint on Tuesday showing continued growth in the social transfer envelope well into the next government’s mandate, the notion of surrendering $40 billion worth of fiscal clout over the provinces is a severely alien concept.

… and who can forget this … or this.

And this is a very good piece:

Stop giving $36B a year to the provinces

Plus a news story, note the implicit opening towards private health care (see: “Tommy Douglas not rolling in his grave enough/Ministers of cults”):

Tory MP suggests scrapping Canada Health Transfer

Conservative MP Maxime Bernier (pictured) on Wednesday proposed scrapping the Canada Health Transfer and giving the provinces dramatically more flexibility in how they deliver services — ideas quickly condemned by critics as a possible trial balloon revealing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “real vision” for health care.
Photograph by: Francis Vachon, Postmedia News

If only.

Update thought: Even if these transfers were cut equalization payments would remain:

…the Government of Canada’s transfer program for addressing fiscal disparities among provinces. Equalization payments enable less prosperous provincial governments to provide their residents with public services that are reasonably comparable to those in other provinces, at reasonably comparable levels of taxation…

So M. Bernier’s transfer of taxation take from the feds to the provinces should not affect the latter’s inherent abilitily to provide services.

Mark
Ottawa