The language of politics defines the moderate middle as wherever we happen to be at the time. So Paul Martin is congratulated for a budget that "lets Liberals be liberals again" at levels of spending that, had they been proposed even five years ago, would have been considered shockingly right wing.

No matter. As social policy, the budget is a triumph, a well chosen assortment of cheap but unassailably progressive initiatives to improve the lot of the poorest Canadians. If it does not go as far or as fast as some would like, bear in mind that this is only the first in what will be a long line of post- deficit budgets. It is the direction that is encouraging -- not for the amount of spending it proposes, but for the way in which that spending is to be allotted.

Take the budget's centrepiece, the so-called Canadian Opportunities Strategy, an array of tax and spending measures designed to help post- secondary students pay for their education.

After the meek submissiveness of the immediate post-referendum era, it is bracing to see the federal government invade in such force into an area the provinces evidently regard as their turf. Not surprisingly, the education package, notably the $2.5- billion scholarship fund, has brought forth a barrage of complaints that it offends the principles of federalism.

It doesn't, of course. The proposal is eminently federalist: if universities do not cross provincial lines, university students certainly do. It is also entirely constitutional. The feds are not proposing to regulate the universities. They merely intend to spread out some federal cash, which the constitution allows them to spend on anything they like.

As if annoying the provinces were not recommendation enough, the thrust of the federal plan -- put more money in the hands of students -- is in keeping with the best principles of modern social policy. If this were the 1960s, the feds might have put the money into bricks and mortar: new schools, new buildings, extra lecture halls. Or they might have hired hundreds of staff to come up with a lot of new programs with catchy acronyms that could be run out of Ottawa.

If this were the 1970s, they might have simply given the money to the provinces -- as the premiers are demanding they should do, even now. The provinces, if they had used the money for education at all, would have showered grateful university administrators with grants, who in turn would use it to keep their unions quiescent. Left out of this equation, of course, were the students.

Contrast this with the approach taken by the present government. All told, by the year 2000, the federal government will be pumping another $1.1- billion every year into the post-secondary education system, whether through the new Millennium scholarships for students from poor families, interest relief for students having trouble paying off their debts, or tax assistance for education savings.

That's enough to replace a good part of the money cut from federal transfers to the provinces for higher education. The difference is that all of the new money, every last dollar of it, will be allocated not by politicians, not by bureaucrats, but by students. That's progress, if only in terms of democratic accountability. Let the provinces raise their own taxes.

Indeed, far from the centralization of which the critics complain, this is the most radical devolution of power the country has ever seen: past the provinces, past the universities, directly into students' pockets. The greater the part of the cost of their education that is paid for by students -- whether the money is their own, or from government coffers -- the more that colleges and universities must pay heed to students' interests and students' concerns.

The federal dollars do not come with strings attached. They do not apply only to institutions within the student's home province, as is the case when the money comes from the provinces. They do not discriminate between universities and community colleges, or between publicly-funded schools and private training agencies like DeVry. They go wherever the student goes, across the street or across the country.

In effect, the federal government has enlisted students as footsoldiers in the creation of a national market in higher education: breaking down provincial barriers, forcing universities to compete -- and maybe, in the process, discovering their country. If it happens also to raise the federal government's profile, well, so much the better.

It's not a perfect plan: a universal system of income-contingent loans would be preferable to targeted grants.

But by putting students' choices first -- Student Power! -- the Canadian Opportunities Strategy is a real step forward: for federalism, for democracy, and for effective social policy.