I discovered a new Canadian cultural and polotical anomoly today called "Equalization".

On my days off, I've taken to going to a cafe and having a coffee whilst I read the paper before I set off adventuring for the day. Today was pretty patchy as about 70% of the paper was about America, Terrorism and Muslims. The other 30% was dedicated to this magical process called "equalization" and how nobody can agree about it.

The pretence is pretty simple. Equalisation is put in place to make sure that the poorer provinces of canada get a portion of the federal reserves to bring them up on level with the richer ones. It involes using a simple (but growing ever more complex) calculation of thier current wealth and income to work out which provinces need the larger portion.

It pretty much falls apart after that because none of the provinces representatives can agree on the calculation, and the cost of jetting the half way across Canada and back becomes tantemount to a very wearysome way of wasting the federal budget. Eventualy everyone will give up, and Steven Harper will just decide what will happen.

I still think it has to be one of the most sensible economic solutions to a lack of equity on a national scale. It just makes sense.