FOR a gang that claims not to like government all that much, conservatives seem strangely comfy with the notion of bringing government "closer to the people." I'd have thought they'd want to keep it as far away as possible.

The current vogue for devolving powers from the federal government to the provinces - "closer to the people" - is one of those collective passions, like the tax exemption for capital gains, to which conservatives periodically succumb, oblivious of the internal contradictions these entail. Perhaps they suppose razing Ottawa will leave them with one less government to worry about. But of course devolution does not divide the potential for government interference by 10: It multiplies it.

Certainly it can't be defended in the name of accountability. Coyne's Law on this is absolute: The closer the government, the less accountable it is. Accountability in a modern democracy is not a matter of proximity, but attention, and attention naturally focuses at the centre. I can tell you exactly who my member of Parliament is; I can hazard a guess at the name of my provincial legislator; I haven't a clue who my city councillor is. Geography may have counted in the days when Lagimodiere snowshoed back and forth between Ottawa and Winnipeg, but communications seem to have advanced since then.

Why then this rage for devolution? Just as it is nonsensical to state a desire for more government or less government - what we should prefer is just enough government - so there is no point in arguing for centralization versus decentralization, per se. There are things that only a federal government can do, just as there are things best left to the provinces. Very well: Let each do its proper job, according to federalist principles.

The true statement is not that the provinces are better at delivering services than the feds, but that some provinces are better at it than others. Multiple jurisdictions allow experimentation with different approaches, from which comparisons can be made and lessons drawn. The case for "competitive federalism" shouldn't be overdrawn: These are governments, after all. Competition isn't their strong suit. Where they do compete, the results can often be perverse, as in the latest bidding wars for capital investment. Just as it is government's role to ensure that the effects of competition among private enterprises are socially benign, so it is the primary duty of the federal government to referee competition among the provinces.

We come then to the proposal for block funding of social programs, said to be a key feature of next week's budget, which would convert federal transfers to the provinces for health, welfare and higher education into a single grant. If it were merely a matter of letting the provinces shift funds from one program to another within the social envelope as needs change, rather than being tied to a given allocation, it would hardly merit concern.

But the plan suggests that the provinces would no longer have to conform to national standards in the design of social programs, whether explicitly, as a matter of policy, or implicitly, as federal funding dwindles, and with it any effective federal penalty for non-compliance. No one is suggesting Ottawa should micro-manage social policy, as if to save the provinces from themselves. But there is all the same a federal dimension to these programs, so far as they involve concerns that cross provincial boundaries. Perhaps we should speak of "federal standards," instead of national standards.

We should want the federal government to insist, for example, that medicare coverage were portable between provinces; that provinces did not off-load welfare cases on one another; that provinces recognized one another's training standards. More ambitiously, we might make funding for higher education as portable as medicare: i.e., federal and provincial funds would follow students to whichever school they attended across the country, rather than being locked within the province of origin. Lloyd Axworthy has made a brave start here.

But the more that such funds are allocated by the choices of students, or patients, or consumers, and not by bureaucrats, the less it matters which level of government claims jurisdiction. If anything, the arguments above would favour federal responsibility. The "closer to the people" dogma, then, is rooted in an interventionist view of government. Where government takes a large and detailed part in managing society, as in a command-and-control economy, it is only wise to limit the size of its jurisdiction - say, to the village - lest it overreach its capacity. But where government's role is more circumspect, it can safely be applied over a broader number of citizens.

"Flexible federalism" is all very well, but federalist federalism is what we should be aiming at.