Last week's column suggested we think of the relationship between federal and provincial governments as a balance of powers, rather than their division, that each might check the other's worst excesses. Let me develop this further.

Any consideration of the division of powers between governments must proceed from an understanding of the powers government should have in the first place. Many of the offices and jurisdictions at issue should not properly be the preserve of government at all, or at least should be stripped of all potential for the discretionary meddling so attractive to empire-builders.

To take but one example, while it is clearly the state's job to guarantee universal access to education, there is no reason why government on any level should own and run the schools. Were the carcass of the state not so bloated, there would not be so many vultures squabbling for their share.

Much of the debate has been clouded by a confusion between these two issues. It is not hard to detect in the arguments of some proponents of a strong central government a hankering after government in general, as the only savior of the nation. Conversely, many conservatives have convinced themselves that massive decentralization would somehow mean less government.

Neither is correct. The Canadian nation is not, as the left would have it, simply a projection of the state. But merely distributing Ottawa's powers to the provinces would not divide power by 10, as the right fancies, but multiply it. As I've said before, the evil of provincialism is not that the federal government loses powers, but that the provinces gain them.

Nonetheless, provincialism is the rage of the moment, without restriction to Quebec, and no amount of reasoned persuasion will forestall it.

Federalists should not despair, however, remembering the thrust of constitutional designs often becomes apparent only after long delay. The U.S. constitution is ostensibly a less centralizing document than the BNA Act, yet look at the result. The trick is to design a constitution which appears to grant the provinces more autonomy, but whose actual effect over time will be the opposite.

This is the intent of the ''massive concurrency'' model suggested last week. Each level of government, remember, would exercise power concurrently across a broad range of policy fields, with only a few reserved exclusively to one or the other.

But the provinces would take over most discretionary spending power, while the Dominion would assume the powers of superintendence needed to assure a degree of uniformity in social programs, and to safeguard the economic union, the environment, and individual rights.

The two worst economic consequences of the present arrangement, the federal deficit and interprovincial trade barriers, would thus be substantially constrained.

This is not to blame the federal government entirely for its fiscal condition, as some provincialists and conservatives would do. It was more the interaction between the two levels that was at fault: The evidence is that Ottawa realized not long after the social spending programs of the 1960s were launched that, without major reforms, they were headed for the rocks. But once the provinces were on board, it proved impossible to gain a consensus.

The power over interprovincial trade, however, is the key to the proposal. While the provinces would appear to have been granted substantial new areas of jurisdiction, the effect of the federal trade power is to emasculate them, so far as they pose any threat to the integrity of the nation. As we remember from the free trade debate, pretty well any government measure can disrupt trade flows, and hence could be interpreted as a trade barrier.

The solution adopted in the case of Canada and the U.S., a treaty between sovereign nations, was the ''national treatment'' principle: Laws may be different, but must apply without discrimination between each country's nationals. The solution applied within the European Community was to agree on common laws and standards in many areas among the member states. The solution appropriate to Canada is to give the federal government power to strike down provincial practices that offend the economic union.

In practice this will likely mean a mixture of the non-discrimination and standardization principles, depending on the provincial sensitivities involved. But it will give the federal government the big stick it needs to shepherd the provinces into line. It will have the simultaneous effect of strengthening the federal position relative to the provinces, and of diminishing the position of the state relative to society. It is the federalist Trojan horse.