Among his memorable comments was this one on federal spending power:
One of the biggest impediments to making this country work functionally, as the fathers of confederation had thought, is to be able to thwart or curb or better control federal spending power, because what is a federal spending power?Something Cannon doesn't understand at all, obviously.
Let's leave aside for a moment Cannonball's bizarre constitutional history lesson. Try as one might, one would have a hard time coming up with a lengthy treatise from say - William Carson or Sir John A. - ranting at length about how the federal government was the source of all fiscal evil through its overwhelming spending powers.
One can find several really good essays by Pierre Trudeau in the 1950s and 1960s, but something suggests Cannonball is not a big fan of
To get back to the subject, the idea to restrict federal spending is an interesting one, if for no other reason than so many provincial premier's are really addicted to federal cash. Sure they like to puff and posture and, in some cases, their minions will scream about this being Danny-land. Cannon's proposal is like calling for a ban on illicit drugs in a downtown crack house. The addicts aren't likely to be much in favour of such a suggestion.
And yes, there is a good reason to curb the tendency of federal governments, like say the Mulroney one, to introduce programs in a provincial area, develop a dependence on it and then - in good form - frick off back to Ottawa. On the retreat of course, said feds cancel the funding leaving the provinces to deal with both the financial demand and/or the political piss-off that results.
But, as we have already shown on several occasions, many of those same premiers who talk about sovereignty and independence or a whole bunch of other things have absolutely no interest in giving up federal transfers.
To the contrary, some of them - like the head of Danny-land - use federal cash as their standard solution to every single provincial demand. So effective has Premier Dan been at this that in a scant three years in office he has set back 10 years of progress towards reducing provincial dependence on federal hand-outs.
But we digress.
The Harper administration's proposal to reduce federal spending in areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction is a laudable one.
It won't work since all but a couple of provinces are unwilling to go along with it in any form.
Harper likely knows that; otherwise he'd have sent someone else out to talk about it, someone other than the almost laughable Lawrence Cannon.