You also have 10 laboratories of experiments where provinces might want to try new things, and what will happen is that there will be a sorting out and eventually the things that are working the best will be adopted by other provinces. What we have now is a system that is artificially enlarging the size of the public sector. There's just not a lot of accountability. When I look at a construction project and there are three levels of government involved, three levels of bureaucracy, three levels of administration, I can't see how that is saving anybody any money. It would be much smarter to give, for example, the gas tax back to the cities or to the province and have them then decide what their local priorities are.
On equalization there is some very good research that's been done by several think tanks showing that the money tends to stick to the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy gets larger. Why would they take money and pass it through? It also discourages innovation and experimentation with new forms of service delivery.
There is a lot of room to have a more creative, innovative public sector by having government stick to their knitting. The federal government is into certain roles—foreign affairs, armies, courts—but it shouldn't be involved in local issues, potholes and so on. The flip side is cities shouldn't be involved in federal issues as well.
There is plenty of opportunity to simplify things. I would argue strongly that the equalization system is actually helping nobody. It certainly hurts Manitoba, where the money has essentially gone into a large, slow-moving system.