(still) defining the "fiscal imbalance"

Education summit not just about money: Charest...

... he says, just before going on to demand $2.2. billion from the feds. Whoops, make that $4.9 billion. As a friend of mine who was a delegate at least week's education summit reported back: there were so many figures flying around, most pulled straight out of dark bodily orifices, that Stephen Harper "would be crazy to pay any attention to any of them." This is probably a good time to link to AC's more-relevant-than-ever column on the "fiscal imbalance". This part is particularly nice:

The fiscal imbalance is one of those things like dark matter or quantum uncertainty that defy comprehension by the ordinary layman. Its precise magnitude has been the subject of countless arcane calculations -- the government of Quebec devoted a whole white paper to the subject -- but its basic mathematical expression may be reduced, by a combination of Lagrange polynomial interpolation and dead reckoning, to two lines: 1. Ottawa has money. 2. We want it.