@dlowan,
Quote:in the Australian constitution such amelioration of the power of Sydney and Melbourne was made institutional in the federal sphere, I believe, to entice smaller and more rural states to agree to federation, since they were concerned that all decisions would end up being made in favour of the big cities otherwise.
That is interesting, Miss Wabbit. In Canada, the then two Canadas (Canada East, now the province of Québec; and Canada West, now the province of Ontario), when proposing confederation in 1867, basically bribed, or were were importuned to bribe the maritime provinces to join their new dominion. The cost of participation was the continued funding of the Intercolonial Railway which served New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The ICR was a money-loser from start to finish, and would never have been undertaken, or if undertaken, sustained by a private commercial venture. Yet when the Federal government finally gave up the "artificial resuscitation" of the ICR, there was an immediate collapse of much of the small business in the maritimes. It had been, after all, a good idea, in that the loss of revenue proved to be greater than the subsidies which had sustained--but that was long after confederation.
Canada's government has a very plutocratic tenor, and always has had. When British Columbia (on the Pacific coast) offered to join in 1871, the price was government support of a transcontinental railway system. This was all in prospect, but the railway companies which hopefully formed had been unable to get John A. and company to open up their pocketbooks. (John A. MacDonald was the hard drinking father of confederation [one of them, and the only one, to hear the Tories tell it] and Tory PM for two generations after 1867.)
Similarly, when rebellion broke out in Manitoba
again in 1885, the foundering railway companies offered to help to raise troops, equip and transport them, in return for promises of funding and loan guarantees which would eventually reach tens of millions of dollars, large sums in the 19th century. The result was the Northwest Mounted Police, which became, in one of Queen Victoria's last official acts, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The principle is enshrined today in the equalization formula. Under that program "have not" provinces receive government subsidies underwritten by the revenues from the "have" provinces. This year, Ontario slipped down into the ranks of the "have not" provinces, to the chagrin of the Provincial Parliament. These days, Alberta is the rich man of Canada, with fabulous revenues from their oil sands and the production and export of natural gas. Alberta is so filthy rich now, that there is no provincial sales tax, and the Albertans are the lowest taxed people in Canada.
For most of Canada's history, poorer provinces--usually the more sparsely populated or rural provinces--were fobbed off with one example of Federal largesse or another.
Quote:I don't think, as you say, that the rural minority has better judgment in many matters than the urban majority...however, when one is attempting to maintain a reasonably contented union, I am not sure that having a couple of areas with all the power would work for long.
Eggs-actly . . .
