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The inclusion of a commitment to equalization in the
Constitution Act, 1982
has led politicians, lawyers, economists, and citizens alike to
assume that a federal program transferring money from all
Canadian citizens to the governments of some "have not" provinces
is a constitutional imperative. This assumption has been used
both to justify the redistributive system and to oppose any
changes that might limit the amount of the transfers made through
the federal program. Before the costs (now nearly $11 billion per
year) and benefits of equalization are considered, the basic
legal arguments that have supported the program deserve careful
scrutiny.
This study uncovers two seldom-discussed problems. First, there
is consensus that Canada's constitutional commitment to
equalization cannot be enforced by a court of law. Insofar as the
commitment is a vague expression of political goals, the action
that governments must take to fulfill it is open to debate.
Second, this debate over the specific requirements of the
Constitution's equalization commitment ignores a more fundamental
issue: equalization uses federal revenues to fund spending in
areas of provincial jurisdiction. As a result, its legality
cannot be resolved without considering the larger question of the
federal government's spending power.
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