Dalton McGuinty is right to try to pry an extra $5 billion from Ottawa. It’s too bad he’s doing it by suggesting the rest of the country is getting fat feeding off the Ontario goose.

It’s a good way to pump up anger levels in Ontario, but it’s not really true.

McGuinty notes that Ontarians have been sending far more tax dollars to Ottawa than we’ve been getting back in federal transfers and that the gap has grown in the last decade — from $2 billion in 1995 to $23 billion today.

That helps explain why rich Ontario has threadbare schools and hospitals, pot-holed roads and inadequate public transit.

But McGuinty is implying that we’re living frugally here because our money is going “for distribution in the rest of Canada,” leaving Ontario ranking last, for instance, in university funding.

This suggests other provinces are enjoying Cadillac social programs at our expense and presses a hot-button issue — equalization payments, under which the “have” provinces (Ontario and Alberta) contribute to the support of the “have-not” provinces.

Although there are some problems with equalization, it’s been an integral part of our federal fiscal system since Confederation and essential to making Canada a more equitable country. What’s been going on in the last decade is something new: Ottawa has drastically cut its social transfer payments to the provinces, starting in 1995.

So, while Ontarians have continued to send Ottawa a lot of taxes, the amount we receive in transfer payments has been greatly reduced in the past decade. As a result, the gap between what we send and what we get back has risen to a staggering $23 billion a year. (Other provinces have suffered as well.)

Although the cuts were implemented in the name of reducing the federal deficit, they’ve mostly remained in place even though the deficit disappeared in 1998. McGuinty knows Ottawa’s spending cuts are the main source of the problem. But he also knows it’s easier to mobilize us by suggesting generous Ontario is being hosed by those lazy have-not provinces.

The approach certainly plays well with the business elite — as McGuinty discovered when he made his pitch to an enthusiastic business crowd last week.

“We support Premier McGuinty in that 100 per cent,” Toronto Board of Trade president Glen Grunwald was quoted as saying.

Would Grunwald have been so supportive if the premier had told the truth: that the gap between what Ontarians pay and what they receive has much less to do with equalization payments than with Paul Martin’s brutal social spending cuts?

So, yes, Martin should give $5 billion back to Ontario for badly-needed social investment here. And McGuinty should stop using cheap political tricks that have the potential to whip up resentment toward poorer provinces.

He’s playing fast and loose with the unity of the country.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...