This weekend in the Globe, Andrew Coyne had a great column on federal spending including transfers to the provinces. Here's a link to it posted to his blog.
While you hunt that down, have a look at Paul Wells' blog entry on the same subject for Feb 26 "Je fais tout pour ne pas me souvenir". He is riffing on some comments from Le Devoir, a newspaper which I would highly recommend people in this province start reading.
This comment in particular had me rolling on the floor:
"One more thing. Courtemanche complains about the "maintenance at an unjust level of... equalization payments." And it's true that the total value of equalization payments hasn't particularly risen in the past decade. This would sort of make sense if you understood that the point of equalization payments isn't to increase provincial revenues from year to year, it's to bloody equalize their fiscal capacity from province to province."
This basic point would seem just...well...obvious. Apparently though the country is beset these days with a raft of provincialist politicians and journalists who have an ongoing struggle with basic principles.
Never before has there been such a powerful case for making every single university graduate in the country suffer through one basic introductory course in Canadian politics.