And if the country shows a Rasputin-like unwillingness to drop dead, last week's federal budget must surely have been the decisive bullet to the temple. After all, wasn't it the same Prime Minister who now brags of having put us on the road to a balanced budget who predicted during the last election that to do so would turn Canada into Bosnia? ("Nobody in Yugoslavia is talking about the problem of the deficit there today.")

On the other hand, we should never forget that the story of the boy who cried wolf ends with the wolf eating the unfortunate lad. Are Bob Rae and others right to predict, after so many false alarms, that the consolidation of federal funding for welfare, health and higher education into a single, smaller, less conditional Canada Social Transfer (CST) means the end of Canada - if not legally, at least "as we know it"?

Certainly the amount of the reduction in these transfers, in cash terms, is breathtaking; indeed, it is greater than has been reported. From $17.3-billion in combined federal cash transfers to the provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan and Established Programs Financing in 1994-95, it takes only a little tickling of the budget's numbers to reveal that in 1997-98, the corresponding amount under the CST is about $10.3-billion - a reduction of $7-billion, or 40 per cent, over three years.

Of course, that's not the only form of federal assistance to the provinces, or some of them at any rate. Equalization payments rise in the same period from $8.5-billion to $9.6-billion. And nominally, federal income-tax revenues "transferred" to the provinces are projected to rise, too, from $11.7-billion to $14.0-billion. So the government is able to say that total transfers, cash and tax points combined, decline only 8 per cent over three years, from $37-billion to $33.9-billion. But who's kidding whom? Failing radical reform of equalization or an equally bold reassertion of federal title to the tax points, the cash portions of CAP and EPF are the only transfers that are even nominally conditional on the provinces' conformity with national standards. It's not the cuts in total spending that hurt; even $7-billion is less than 5 per cent of provincial revenues, and anyway, anyone who's taken the time to look knows that twice that much could be extracted in any serious redesign without harm to the social fabric. But it stands to reason that cuts ofthis size would give the federal government less leverage over provincial policies under the CST than its predecessors, leaving aside any explicit agreement to that effect.

It has never been made clear just why this should be such a national priority. The provinces are not conspicuously constrained under present arrangements: Medicare varies widely from province to province, as does social assistance; some provinces use funds intended for higher education to build highways (roads scholarships?). It's odd, too, that the same people who advised opponents of the Meech and Charlottetown accords not to get so hung up about a few words in a constitution are so insistent on the same constitution's provisions assigning the provinces jurisdiction over social programs.

Surely the focus, instead of locking each government inside watertight compartments, should be on finding the appropriate role for each. As a semantic note, it might be worth distinguishing "federal standards" from national standards. The provinces don't need Ottawa to tell them whether to paint hospital walls white or green. But somebody has to ensure that the provinces don't offload the costs of social services onto each other, or put up walls between them.

It's not a given that block funding will preclude the federal government from that role; certainly it is much less of a threat in this regard than Meech or Charlottetown were. But the time to negotiate that is now, while it still has the leverage. Otherwise, it would mean, well, you know. . . .