It isn't structure and distribution of powers that are the problem

Wilson and Manuel are right in their comments about the levels of government and what powers have been assigned to each (to the feds and the provinces) by the various pieces of legislation that created Canada. The powers given to cities is given to them by the provinces.

I agree that most people have little understanding of this, including many of the turkeys that are elected at every level. And most people don't need to understand it. That's what lawyers are for - to tell you where the roadblocks are and then how to get around them.

The point is, there is nothing to stop both levels from entering into agreements and there is nothing to stop the feds from giving money to whomever it wants.

Health care is provincial, not federal but that didn't stop the feds and the provinces hammering out agreements on transfer payments etc. Any fool knows education is a provincial responsibility but that doesn't stop payments from the feds to the provinces for educational purposes - they make them all the time.

As for Mulroney having solved the debt by the creation of the GST, look again my friend. That government ran up the biggest deficits in Canadian history - they went on spending when they should have been pulling in on the reigns and it was the Chretien government, with their huge cuts in transfer payments and their refusal to continue funding programs until the debt was under control, that brought us out of the Mulroney mess. That's not speculation, that's fact and it is easily checkable.

There has always been overlap between the two levels of government and good prime ministers and good governments find ways to help out provinces and cities and health and educational institutions, regardless of the fact that they fall under provincial jurisdiction.

I am not talking about changing the constitution. What Harper has a chance to do, and is failing to do on a grand scale, is to enter into positive working relationships with the provinces and with the large urban areas. At the very least, the feds could offer loans to large cities to rebuild infrastructure. The loans could be long-term in nature, with little or no interest and spread out over 50 or 100 years or whatever. They could be targeted precisely - $17 billion to the GTA to build the following specific subway extensions and to buy exactly these number of buses and streetcars etc.

They could make loans to rebuild a bridge or to replace deteriorating water and sewage systems. A smart PM, a creative PM, would find ways of bringing relief and help to municipalities and cities in a way that would lead to desperately needed upgrades, at the same time allowing the province to have more funds available for education and health.

There are any number of partnerships that could be entered into for set periods of time, or loans that could be made, grants that could be given. There is no end to what could be done if the spirit and the vision were there - God knows the money is but we have a PM who is blinkered and rigid in his thinking. He's stuck in the stupid rhetoric of the American right - George Bush and the Republican Party who think government is the problem. As the Americans have learned to their sorrow, it's not the government per se that is a problem it's the incompetent boobs in the White House who have spent the country into a perilous deficit through a war it can't win and should never have been in. Who the hell ever sold the myth that right wing parties are good managers? They can't manage tying their shoes without help.

It isn't our structure that's at fault - it is that we are bereft of leadership. We have many problems in this country but almost every one of them can be resolved if there is leadership brought to bear on them. It is a cruel twist of fate that we are stuck with a guy as PM who has neither vision nor creativity and who mistakes stubborness with leadership.