Apparently things did not go well at this week's round of federal-provincial meetings on "the social union" - the political catch-phrase for a set of rules prescribing what role each of the two levels of government should play in the finance and delivery of social programs. Ontario Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dianne Cunningham went so far as to describe the mood around the table as "tense." Though the ministers will meet again next month, there's mounting concern in provincial capitals that the whole project could collapse.

Gosh, I sure hope so.

The press insists on describing these bizarre affairs as "negotiations." They are nothing of the kind. Negotiations mean a give and take - a balancing of demands, an exchange of concessions, a mutual gain. No such reciprocal relationship is involved here. From the start, the "talks" have consisted of nothing but an endless stream of provincial demands for more money, more power or best of all, more of both, each one more brazen than the last. At no time have they ever suggested or even considered any offsetting restraint on provincial discretion or enhancement of federal powers.

For that matter, neither has the present federal government, whose steady supply of concessions to the provinces - job training, forestry, tourism, housing, urban affairs, immigration, capped by the remarkable promise never to embark upon another shared-cost social program without provincial approval - has not been quite speedy enough to escape being assailed as "rigid centralists." Indeed, as might have been predicted - as was predicted - the more the feds have conceded, the more the provinces have demanded.

Consider the latest provincial "proposal": The provinces want Ottawa to increase transfers by $6-billion a year over the next three years. You read that right: $6-billion. Ostensibly, this would merely restore the $6-billion cut from the Canada Health and Social Transfer (the lump-sum transfer that replaced those provided under the old Canada Assistance Plan and Established Programs Financing) since 1994. But the cuts in CHST grants were accompanied by the removal of most federal conditions on their use, a process that had begun two decades before, when EPF replaced cost-sharing in health and higher education with block grants.

Do the provinces, then, propose that federal conditionality should be restored along with the federal cash? Not on your life. In fact, they want to remove, or at least restrict, what few conditions remain. The most moderate of them would be content with joint federal-provincial determination and enforcement of national standards, which is big of them: the provinces would decide on what conditions they would accept the federal government's benevolence.

But that's not all. Not only would federal spending on shared-cost programs be subject to provincial control, but so, according to the provinces' "consensus negotiating position," would Ottawa's ability to launch new programs it funds entirely on its own. Effectively, the federal government would be banned from spending money in any area of social policy: so no Millennium scholarships for university students, no home care, no drug insurance. Instead, in the provinces' proposal, the feds would simply collect the taxes, so that the provinces could spend them. The provinces would continue to impose residency requirements for social assistance, charge discriminatory tuition fees to out-of-province university students, and allow user fees in health care - and the feds would pick up the tab.

Oh, but the provinces are full of helpful proposals like these. There's $1.5- billion more for equalization, for starters. The provinces, you see, could not agree on a formula for allocating the CHST. The rich provinces, who now receive proportionately less than their populations would warrant, want to move to equal per capita funding. That means they would get more. Alas, it also implies, by an unfortunate mathematical necessity, that the the poor provinces would get less. After much heavy thinking, it was agreed that the solution was - surprise, surprise - for Ottawa to offset the loss to the poor provinces, via the equalization program. How creative.

Then there's the $3.8-billion cut in Employment Insurance premiums the provinces have thoughtfully demanded. Not to mention another $2-billion in spending for roads and bridges. All told, that's $13-billion charged to the federal credit card. In return, the provinces have offered to - what? Consent to a single national securities regulator? Agree to remove all provincial trade barriers? Recognize federal paramountcy in immigration? In international trade? In any area of national life whatever?

Well, no. The federal government gives, and the provinces take. That is the law of federal-provincial negotiations. And that is how it will remain, until and unless the federal government resolves to make some demands of its own.