Taking the pledge

John Robson

I WAS SINCERELY DELIGHTED to see B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt, in a recent televised address to the province, deliver a pledge of no new taxes, this time including no increase in existing taxes, and also a promise that he would balance the budget by 1996. When the current government was campaigning back in 1991, they deliberately created the impression that they were New New Democrats, that they would provide the sorts of compassionate programs that their opponents would not, but without the fiscal meltdown and social collapse that has customarily accompanied the modern welfare state.

Obviously they did not deliver in the first two years. But the Premier's address conveys the impression that this failure has been bothering him, and not just politically. Mike Harcourt really thought he was going to govern in a kinder, gentler, but fiscally prudent way, and despite the bumps and bruises of a novice government he remains committed to doing so.

And the budget delivered by Finance Minister Elizabeth Cull on March 22nd, at least ostensibly, fulfilled the Premier's promises.

Two points therefore stand out as worth stressing. First, the Premier did not promise to freeze fees and other sources of revenue, though he did indicate that they do not amount to a large slice of the provincial government's income. Nor should he, if they are fees for government services consumed voluntarily. However the Premier should draw a careful distinction between such fees, and fees for government services that it is compulsory to accept or at least pay for. Those are very tax-like and should be included in the pledge.

For instance, toll roads and fees for drivers' licenses are real fees: you don't have to drive, and if you do drive, you are the principal beneficiary. But if the government mandates safety or other inspections, and then charges for them, that is a different matter. This is, as Mr. Harcourt indicated, a minor source of revenue, but since government credibility in general is very low these days it is worth attending to.

And the budget did contain a projected $25 million in fee increases (p. 50).

The second point is much more serious. The Premier and the Minister pointed to reductions in the deficit in their time in office as proof that the beast was being tamed, that a balanced budget is within reach. Unfortunately this is not entirely true.

Spending control so far has included two components that either cannot or can no longer contribute to balancing the budget. The first of these is offloading spending into the Crown Corporation sector. Crown Corporation borrowing and debt does not show up in the deficit or the official provincial debt, and that is entirely appropriate to the extent that the Corporations are borrowing against saleable assets. But to the extent that they are not, their debt is a time-bomb.

By far the most serious flaw in this budget is the moving of large amounts of health and education capital account spending off budget into BC 21.BC 21 spending on "schools, health care facilities, post-secondary institutions, and justice facilities will total $1 billion in 1994/95" (B.C. Budget 94, p. 14). Ms. Cull claimed that the replacement value of the B.C. government's assets was $60 billion; but is that their sale value? -Note.   without therefore moving it from the category of tax-supported to the category of asset- and fee-supported government borrowing. Ms. Cull stressed in her budget speech the difference between operating deficits, which she deplored as "buying the groceries with your credit card," and borrowing to pay for investments, which she praised as "similar to taking out a mortgage to buy a house." But while that is true, she has failed to tailor her budget to her description of it.See the chart on p. 59 of the budget for a picture of the tax-supported versus self-supporting debt of all government agencies; of course this procedure is not a recent invention, and a great deal of this was inherited not only by Ms. Cull when she became Finance Minister but by this government when it assumed office.-Note .

The other component is even more serious. Premier Harcourt, like countless other hard-pressed political leaders, has been concentrating his budget cuts on the smaller programs and has been ignoring the big ones. For example, in the period April to September 1993, the Quarterly Report of the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations shows the growth of spending in various programs. Only six categories have spending for that six-month period of over $400 million, and in all but one of those--education--spending has been increasing at 5 percent annually or higher. Of these, the largest increase--14.9%--is in "Management of Public Funds and Debt." Meanwhile, total spending rose only 3%. The budget projects some considerable improvement in this picture (see p. 46) but again the plain fact is that it has been achieved by moving things into BC 21 that don't belong there.

Moreover, what had been achieved through September 1993 was the result of cutting the small programs. The largest (double-digit) reductions are in agriculture, fisheries and food, in economic development, small business, and trade, in energy, mines and petroleum resources, in government services and in transportation and highways. Now, I'm not defending all government spending in these areas. I'm just pointing out that starving the runts while the biggest puppies gorge will not reduce your long-term bills for meat; quite the reverse.

If the Premier and the Finance Minister want to balance the budget, they will have to address both the runaway spending of the big social programs and its cause, their highly unsatisfactory design.

So to Mr. Harcourt and his caucus we say, as we said in 1991, that though we applaud your goals, we think your methods are not yet suited to achieving them.

Power to the people

Filip Palda

IF CANADIANS HAD THE RIGHT to propose national referendums, government spending and taxes would be lower than they are now. Opinion polls and academic studies suggest that voters think governments tax and spend too much. But no one wants to give up their favourite government program for fear that someone else might get to hold on to theirs. Government is like a restaurant in which everyone's feasting goes on the same tab. If I sit with nine people and order a drink, I pay only one tenth of its cost. If I hold back I get only a tenth of the savings from my restraint. This is why common tabs encourage gluttony and drunkenness beyond what most people want. If Canadians could hold each other to a mutual "non-feasting" agreement most of us would come closer to getting the government we want. A national referendum could help us to come to such an agreement.

Referendums are truly "people's" laws because they cut the middlemen out of lawmaking. Referendums give politicians their marching orders and keep special interest groups from getting special treatment. The 1992 debate on the constitution showed how far apart the wishes of the people and of special interest groups can lie. The proposed constitution was a wish list put together in part by social activists who wanted to enshrine big government. In spite of a heavily-funded government propaganda campaign Canadians voted "no" to the wish list. The special interests had made their demands to the wrong people.

With everyone deciding government spending directly, no group could lobby politicians for special exemption. Politicians would have no say in the matter. Everyone would be bound by the majority's wish. A national referendum question asking "Do you want government to reduce spending by 20 percent across the board?" leaves little room for lobbying, bargaining, and special pleading.

Critics of referendums point out that complicated government policies cannot be reduced to one question and that voters are not informed enough to decide the proper mix of spending and taxes. However, the evidence suggests that voters make good use of political information. Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago found that free-spending politicians in the U.S. states won less than half as frequently as prudent politicians. Voters apparently use publicly available budget information to make their decisions, and they "cast the most jaundiced eye toward the kind of spending (welfare) with the slimmest benefit for most voters." The political market does not discard much information. Budget information from two or three years before the election carries political weight.

If these findings apply to Canada, a referendum would allow voters to use their information in a direct way. Referendums need not be crude one line questions, asked only once every few years. We have the technology to let people vote from their homes every week. For example, a "Referendum Channel" could present the question of the week. Different political groups could advertise their views on the question. A voter would then dial an electronic polling station, punch in a personal identification number, and vote. People shop by watching commercial channels, register for university courses by phone, and pay credit card bills through their computer. There is no reason why voters should be stuck casting their ballots the same way they have for the past 100 years.

Reference

Peltzman, Sam (1992), "Voters as Fiscal Conservatives," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, pp. 327-361.

An eye on the prize

John Robson

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO announce the selection of the 33 finalists in this year's Fraser Institute Economy in Government Competition. We had another record response this year--over 800 entries--and as in the past the ideas ideas range from technical aspects of government administration through the entire range of spending activities all the way to the big social programs.

We are equally pleased to announce that federal Finance Minister Paul Martin has agreed to attend our awards ceremony in Toronto, to be held June 17th, and to present the top prize of $20,000. The purpose of the contest has always been to help government, not heckle it, and Mr. Martin's presence will be one more sign that we are succeeding.

We would also like to note in this context that our 3rd prize winner from 1991, Mr. Alan Blyth, has formally submitted a claim for the remaining portion of his prize on the ground that his proposals regarding the foreign service have in large measure been implemented, and that we have approved this claim and cut him a cheque. We hope that Mr. Martin will find many of the ideas from this and previous years to be useful, and that we will be able to announce a steady stream of adopted contest proposals.

The finalists, who have until May 13th to turn their short initial submissions into detailed action plans, are (from west to east, approximately): Mr. F. C. W. Minty of Victoria, British Columbia on Revenue Canada postage policy; Mr. Richard I. Nelson of Vancouver, British Columbia, on Ports Canada; a group including Mr John H. Stubbs of Vancouver, British Columbia, on direct deposits; Mr. Robert J. McConnachie of Vancouver, British Columbia on the Negative Income Tax; Dr. Bill W. Weaver of Vancouver, British Columbia on health care; Mr. Donald Byers of Vancouver, British Columbia on privatizing government assets; Mr. William H. Boulding of Cobble Hill, British Columbia on technical aspects of payment of Old Age Security; Ms. Eileen A. Kilgour of Vancouver, British Columbia on the Canada Pension Plan; Jolyon & Sandra Hallows of Burnaby, British Columbia on government procurement; Mr. Roy Langston of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia on immigration sponsorship; Mr. Frank Howard of Surrey, British Columbia on the administration of civil service pensions; Mr. Gerald B. Parsons of Delta, British Columbia on the structure of the civil service; Ms. Judy Miles of Vancouver, British Columbia on an electronic ID card; Mr. David B. Finlay of West Vancouver, British Columbia with a proposal on coinage even more straightforward than that of the 1991 winner; Ms. Allison J. Toki of Vernon, British Columbia on streamlining court procedures for minor offenses; Mr. Sherwood Botsford of Edmonton, Alberta on education; Mr. Graham Clews of Westlock, Alberta on the Old Age Security; Dr. Joe Freedman of Red Deer, Alberta on education; Mr. Peter Lacey of Red Deer, Alberta on Unemployment Insurance; Ms. Shelley Marszalek of Red Deer, Alberta on MPs' pensions; Mr. Peter Mjolid of Swift Current, Saskatchewan with a proposal on farm income security; Mr. Thomas W. Hadaller of Winnipeg, Manitoba, last year's grand prize winner but still hungry, on electronic banking for social assistance; Mr. Terry W. Rieger of Winnipeg, Manitoba with a proposal on new product standards; Mr. Donald F. Power of Thunder Bay, Ontario with a proposal on postage stamps; Mr. Raul S. Lopez of Ottawa, Ontario on nuclear fuel waste management; Ms. Sylvie Lauzon of Ottawa, Ontario on cigarette smuggling; Mr. Jean Sévigny of Ottawa, Ontario on government procurement; Ms. Lois Ward of Annan, Ontario on nursing; Mr. Myles Wilson of Orillia, Ontario on spur rail lines in Ontario; Mr. Joe McLinden of Peterborough, Ontario, who was a finalist in 1991, on a replacement for the GST; Mr. G. F. V. Wilkie of Nepean, Ontario with a proposal on technical aspects of payment of the Guaranteed Income Supplement; Dr. Jon Breslaw of Montreal, Quebec on health care; Ms. Jane Danielson of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, our Maritime regional winner last year but like Mr. Hadaller still hungry, on Department of National Defence housing policy; Ms. Cammie A. Nash of St. John's, Newfoundland on the Public Service Commission of Canada; and Mr. Grant Burton of Gander, Newdoundland on government computer systems.

We congratulate them all, and await their finished papers eagerly.

Is Canadian health care a good model for others to follow?-- part II

Michael Walker

ON FEBRUARY 9TH I WAS one of three Canadians who appeared before the U.S. Congress to testify about the effectiveness of the Canadian health care system. The Congress believes that Canada has found the secret to providing universal, top-quality health care at a low cost. The facts we presented to the them suggested otherwise.

The Fraser Institute survey of hospital waiting lists shows that nearly one percent of our population is waiting for surgery. It also shows that, unlike the myth, access is not uniform across the country, but varies enormously by province. That is not surprising, of course, because health spending also varies by province. One would expect the more a province spends, the closer it would come to the U.S. experience of no or very short waiting lists. The shortest waiting times are measured in Ontario, which spends $7,200 per family of four on health care, nearly double that spent in Prince Edward Island, which has the lowest cost care at $4,800, and the longest waiting times.

A comparison of technologies shows that many Canadians do not have access to the latest diagnostic machinery and enough treatment facilities at their disposal. For example, we have one tenth the number of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machines per capita as the United States. While there will always be the question (with no definitive answer) of how many is enough, the fact that private NMRI facilities are opening in Alberta and British Columbia, and that Canadians are travelling to the U.S. to get such diagnostic imaging, suggests that we have not kept pace in this area.

The Congress learned from Dr. William MacKillop of the Kingston Regional Cancer Centre that to their detriment cancer patients are now getting less radiation therapy for specific cancers than they were ten years ago. Less radiation therapy means more surgery, more disfigurement, and less longevity. Dr. MacKillop pointed out that there was a shortage of radiation therapy units, a shortage of people to operate them and a shortage of people to train people to operate them. This, he noted, is in spite of the fact that the current increasing demand for cancer therapy had been accurately forecast as early as 1975 (because the incidence of cancer is age-dependent and the average age of our population is increasing in a very predictable way). The bureaucrats had simply not reacted to the foreseeable need, he pointed out.

Perhaps the most important comment he made to the Congress concerned a comparison he had made of waiting times for radiation therapy between Canada and the United States. The comparison he offered was based on a comprehensive survey of cancer centres in Canada and in the United States. The U.S. Centres are government operated and provide access on the same basis as the Canadian hospitals. Dr. MacKillop asked the centres to provide the number of weeks that a patient could expect to wait for therapy for cancers of specific types. He found that in every case Canadian patients were waiting longer than American patients. In the case of some cancers, the median wait was three times as long in Canada as it was in the U.S.

While Dr. MacKillop had many nice things to say about the Canadian system, about how unnecessary surgeries and treatment were kept to a minimum, he was concerned about whether the government bureaucracies were capable of anticipating and reacting to the health care needs of the population in the way that it should. In particular, he thinks that cancer patients are not receiving the treatment they need and should be getting.

Dr. MacKillop's testimony about cancer and mine about waiting lists was given some real-life impact by the testimony of Ms. Lisa Priest of the Toronto Star newspaper. Ms. Priest has been doing a series of articles on how waiting lists affect particular patients in Ontario. Her stories are both heart-wrenching and effective in pointing to the specific problems which beset our health care system. Ms. Priest surprised observers, however, by coming to the paradoxical conclusion that faults and all, she would chose the Canadian health care system over the U.S. because, she noted, there are two things Canadians fear when they go to the United States--that they will get shot or get sick. Evidently those who go there to get the health care--including the cancer therapies about which Ms. Priest writes--are not included in this assessment.

Letters

Dear Editor:

Re: John Robson's "The Diogenes Club" in the February issue of Forum. After mentioning "the simmering dispute between the libertarians and conservatives who coexist beneath the laissez-faire tent" he fails to make clear what the dispute is about. His article comes to a very libertarian conclusion (that government should not prevent people from excluding others) but he claims this is the conservative position. Wrong! Let me clarify.

I believe in tolerance. I tolerate people of different lifestyles, races and even religious and political beliefs. I recognize, however, that this is a life preference and I wouldn't want government to enforce my values of tolerance on anyone.

"Tolerant" conservatives (either members of left wing parties or "red" tories) wish to use the power of government to enforce their belief of tolerance on everyone. Thus our ridiculous anti-hate or employment equity programs. "Intolerant" conservatives (usually members of right wing parties) seek to use government power to enforce their different moral codes on the rest of us. The libertarian position is clear. Live your life the way you want, free from government interference in your personal choices, but you can't escape from the voluntary social judgements that people around you make. You shouldn't use government to force people to treat you the way you want to be treated.

Contrary to what Dr. Robson implies, you will never find in Reason, Liberty, The Freeman, or our very own West Coast Libertarian calls to create "a nightmare world where prostitution is legal, but scorning whores or their clients is not." Rather, you will find reasoned arguments about why government is not the right institution to enforce morality. Contrary to conservatives, libertarians don't seek to gain the levers of power to force their morality on the rest of us. They believe that individuals should be free to make their own beds and understand that this means paying the price of lying in them too.

Paul Geddes, Deputy Leader,

Libertarian Party of Canada

John Robson replies:

I find myself agreeing with almost every ostensible point in Paul Geddes' letter and yet not agreeing with his letter. It is correct as far as it goes: libertarian theory does allow individuals to express their preferences by, among other things, refusing to associate with or seeking out as associates people whose behaviour they deplore or approve of. Libertarians do argue, and correctly, that government is not the appropriate instrument for enforcing any morality beyond Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Steal, and Thou Shalt Not Attack, Assault, Maim or Wound. But my point, which I maintain, is that libertarianism puts people off because they sense correctly that most libertarians, at any rate, are actually attracted to a world where "anything goes." One popular new book on the libertarian list is entitled "Ain't nobody's business if you do," and the title reflects what seems to be the prevailing mood among libertarians. But while I agree with the position that the very concept of a victimless crime is incompatible with a legal and constitutional system built on property rights, I would argue that a key point about freedom of association is that it is anybody's business if you do though they cannot use force to involve themselves in your affairs. That was precisely the point of "The Diogenes Club." And I continue to maintain that there is a serious if simmering dispute between conservatives and libertarians, a dispute not over policy recommendations, on which they largely agree, but over the sort of society they would use their freedom to create. I think libertarianism remains a fringe ideology because people sense that most committed libertarians, though conceding the right to build communities based on mutually agreed and voluntarily accepted commitments to civil behaviour, would not exercise that right. This is not true of all libertarians, of course--it is not true of Paul Geddes, who is a fine chap--but it is true of too many of them. Many people, including myself, find libertarianism as a belief system unappealing because too many of its most ardent defenders justify their doctrines more on the basis of your right to do whatever feels good than on the basis of your right to do what you think is right. Paul is right that in a libertarian world, scorning whores or their clients would be legal, but I don't therefore think the remark in my article to the contrary was inappropriate in its implications because I don't see libertarianism defended on that basis. The distance from libertarian to libertine is, in short, too short. And that is why I call myself a conservative and not a libertarian.

April graph

Isabella Horry

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April Table

Isabella Horry

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States of confusion

John Robson

[This is the sixth in an ongoing series of articles on an ideal Constitution]

The importance of being federal

ANY CONSTITUTION THAT aspires to limit governmental power must contain a clause similar to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Both philosophically and technically it is essential to restraining the power of government that sovereignty or popular consent (in republics and constitutional Monarchies respectively) is delegated upward from the people to the government, which may do only those things that the people expressly permit. And any system of government that has this feature is superior to any that does not.

But if a limited system of government is to last it should also contain a clause similar to the Tenth Amendment to that Constitution, which says that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Therefore federations must not be confused with other forms of government, for instance the Canadian, in which there are layers of government but in which sovereignty does not flow up from the people through the provincial, state or parish governments to the centre. A true federation is characterized not simply by layers of government, but layers that stand in a definite relationship to one another.

In a properly federal system the national government is a creature of the states, provinces or estados. In a true federation the latter are themselves links in the transmission of sovereignty or consent from the people up to the national government, and just as they may exercise no powers that the people have not delegated to them, so the central government may exercise no powers that the provinces or states have not delegated to it. And in such a system the states or provinces are not partners of the federal government. They are its leash-holders. And the key advantage of federations even over other forms of limited government is durability. Federations don't just work, they last.

Why the Ninth Amendment?

The first federal principle, that governments have only those powers expressly delegated to them by the citizens, is absolutely fundamental to the whole project of limiting government. Any constitution not built upon some version of the American Ninth Amendment will lack both the philosophical underpinnings and the institutional mechanisms--binding Bills of Rights, referenda on basic issues, effective divisions of power within layers of government (executive-legislative, between houses of parliament, etc.), mechanisms for summoning Constitutional conventions--that tend to hold government in check.

Why the Tenth Amendment? Why not Article 91?

The second federal principle, incarnated in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and rejected in Article 91 of our own, is more complex. Many governments, including that of Canada, are layered without being federations because there are many advantages to layered government that are not dependent on the federal principle. It should be noted that even unitary states, whether dependent on delegated power or not, are in some sense layered, because they have municipal governments. But not only French or Soviet but also British municipalities are unable to perform a key function of the states in a truly federal system, as are Canada's provinces, because they are not links in the chain of sovereignty.

Divide and don't be conquered

First and foremost, the division of power between levels of government is desirable on the same principle that dividing it within levels (the executive from the legislature and the judiciary, and dividing the legislature itself into two houses) is desirable: the guardians shall guard each other.

Laboratories of democracy

Smaller units of government also offer advantages in terms of efficiency. They will have differing policies on some matters, which enables us to experiment at lower cost and so refine our policies. And the non-progressive-minded will also assume that, as not all people will in the end wish to live the same way, the existence of different jurisdictions with differing policies increases the likelihood that we will be able to find one that suits us personally. This, of course, is an argument not just for provinces but for a considerably more flexible conception of local government than is often supposed.

Laboratories of plunder

In a forthcoming Institute book, The New Federalist, public choice school co-founder Gordon Tullock describes how this might be done. He further argues that the rational reason why governments tend to get out of hand is that if one can seize control of them and burst their bonds they present an opportunity for plundering one's fellow citizens. Written limits on government of various sorts are of course devices for trying to prevent this. But Tullock further suggests that the size and shape of governmental units can also be designed to reduce the opportunities for plunder. Governments that are not only formally weak, but also have jurisdiction over small areas containing relatively homogeneous citizenry--not racially, of course, but by preferences--would present fewer temptations, as well as fewer opportunities, for "us" to plunder "them" or vice versa because, in general, "us" would also be "them."

John C. Calhoun

But Tullock's sub-subunits lack an essential characteristic of the immediately sub-national units of a true federation: they are not links in the chain of sovereignty or consent.And it is because they lack this characteristic that Canada's provinces, though they do struggle with the federal government, struggle far too much over who shall do what to the hapless citizenry, and not nearly enough over what is encroaching on the liberties of the people. The voice of the provinces was not heard, for instance, protesting the omission of property rights in 1982. -Note. Whatever the advantages of various school boards, municipal governments, and other types of government that he describes, they all receive their sovereign power or legitimacy not up from the people but down from the provincial, state or parish governments.

And therefore they do not present the key advantage offered by truly federal states: an intermediate layer of government whose natural function in practise is to oppose usurpations of power by the centre. Unitary states offer, by and large, only extraordinary measures for controlling government, such as constitutional conventions that must, in turn, be summoned by the very legislature it is their purpose to control.

The major dynamic advantage of having provinces, states or Länder is that it is simply much easier in practise for a subsidiary level of government to guard against the usurpation of sovereignty than for "the people" to do so. A gathering of the people is an extraordinary event, and very hard to manage if the government does not deliberately summon it; the meeting of a provincial legislature is routine, and for the federal government to attempt to prevent it would trigger a crisis automatically.

Moreover, the role of the states as the gatekeepers of power means that state government naturally attracts those who seek to limit government, further increasing the probability that a federal structure will endure over time. Real federalism gives decentralizers a level of government naturally amenable to them that is entirely lacking both in unitary systems and also in faux federations like the Canadian or Soviet, though for different reasons. In a real federation the natural role of "statesmen" is to fight centralization. I am indebted for this argument in large measure to my brother's book Dynamic Tensions, published by C.D. Howe; on the whole topic see also Confederation at the Crossroads and Federalism in Peril by The Fraser Institute. -Note.  And that is why federations do not just work, they last.

Three-layer cake

It is of course possible to design a system in which the states or provinces are creatures of the municipalities, rural districts, and other sub-sub-units that Tullock proposes. If the provincial or state constitutions were themselves ratified not by the people, as in a two-layer federation, but by municipalities and rural districts whose constitutions were approved in constitutional conventions of the citizens, then we would get a three-level federalism (as they may get, in part at least, in the European Community, depending upon the domestic arrangements of various member nations).

Send more provinces

But if we do decide to reconstruct our government as a truly federal system, and decide that a three-layer system is too baroque, then Tullock's analysis of ways of designing subunits so that they will be less inclined to plunder applies even more forcefully with respect to the key links in the chain of sovereignty than they do with respect to the municipal and rural creatures of those key links.

If we reconstitute ourselves as a real federation, the provinces will keep the central government in check. For in a two-layer federation the provinces are going to retain almost all of the powers ceded to them by the citizens, and that does present certain problems with respect to them. So long as local governments are creatures of the provinces, or the states, rather than the reverse, they cannot function the way provinces or states do in a truly federal system. For, again, what is sent down can be pulled back up. That means that we do have to worry to a large extent that the provinces will do what the central government might if they did not exist.

Part of the solution is not to delegate much power to them; and indeed unless this condition is met there will be little gain in limiting the central government. But even once we have done this we need to worry that the provinces, like the semi-unitary states they are, will themselves burst the paper bonds that hold them down. But the reason they are liable to do this is that there are opportunities for rent-seeking if one can seize control of the provincial government.

So in designing provinces, even if they are not links in the chain of sovereignty but especially if they are, we should make them small, weak and homogenous (and therefore more numerous This would increase the cost of legislatures etc., but if it yields the anticipated present and future benefits it would be immensely beneficial on balance. ).-Note.

We can see that this theoretical position has immediate practical advantages. In the case of B.C., for instance, it seems quite clear that having land-use and other decisions for northern B.C. made, for all practical purposes, by the representatives of the numerous voters in the Lower Mainland presents an open invitation to abuse, that has been exploited. Other large provinces for the most part present similar or at least analogous situations. Moreover, the move to more but smaller provinces would not only allow us finally to admit the Territories as provinces but would also bring native self-government much closer to realization and help make not only Quebeckers but communities within Quebec maitres chez eux.

So in addition to turning our Constitution on its head by making it properly federal, we should also consider drastically increasing the number of the provinces, to perhaps as many as 25.

It's all in the mind

Of course one must bear in mind that institutions are not decisive, particularly in the long run. There is no guarantee that a truly federal constitution would protect Canadians from their governments if they do not remain vigilant; there is no guarantee that anything would.

Adopting a federal system would require us to put into place not only the institutional but also the philosophical foundations of a government that belongs to the people, not the reverse. And doing that would provide the best chance available to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

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