Politics is the art of getting what you want by giving people what they think they want. I have often said that if I am ever in office, on my office wall will be a picture of the Queen giving Snow White the poisoned apple, sweet, red, round… beautiful and luscious.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister, probably doesn’t think of politics in quite that way, but he understands exactly what I mean. His 2006 budget is that apple – sweet and beautiful, shining in the media glare with a sheen of sweet tax cuts.

And Stephen has come up with many of those tax cuts by doing exactly what he has always wanted to do – he’s cut shared federal and provincial programs, to the tunes of billions of dollars, and redirected those dollars either to cuts, or to subsidies to his base (such as the child care allowance, whose greatest benefit goes to families with stay at mums (no, not stay at home husbands. That’s an unintended and unfortunate result from the point of view of the Conservatives. Let’s not gild this already burnished apple.))

As Stephen steps out of this tax space, the programs will go away. Provinces which want those programs will have to pay for them themselves. And no, the tax cuts don’t even out. Although Stephen has created tax cuts which are much more even that those of his ideological friends in the United States, the nature of money is simple – the majority of the benefit, in dollar terms, will indeed go to those who are wealthier.

That means, in a nutshell, Alberta, and to a much lesser extent Ontario. The GDP per capita in the Maritimes is half of that of Alberta and 2/3 of Ontario’s. Nor will the other prairies provinces benefit from this, bringing to mind the bitter words of a Saskatchewan commenter that “from where I sit, I feel a lot more oppressed by Alberta than by Ontario.”

So the “have” provinces will “have” the ability to take up the tax space, still leave a bit of tax cut, and have the programs too. And the other provinces won’t.

It’s an old joke that people would rather be badly ruled by their own, then be well ruled by outsiders. In this case, the other prairie provinces, and the forestry dependent hinterlands of BC and Ontario will discover that to be all too true. And thinking the apple delicious, they may well reward Harper for giving it to them.

Those who have, get.

And those medicare dollars people wanted from the Feds? Well, Harper will respond “I’m afraid the Federal government has no money for that. We gave the money to your province’s citizens.” And he will laugh, and laugh, and laugh, as the premiers are forced to raise raxes to pay for health care. Ah, the sweet beauty of it – Stephen will be the hero who gave tax cuts, and the Premiers the ones who took them away…

In the end, the best way to bribe people is with their own money. And better yet if in doing so you can enrich your base and make your enemies unpopular (and no Premier is ever the Prime Minister's real friend.)

Stephen’s off to a good start – in his time as Prime Minister he has ceded the American lumber industry everything they wanted in a way that will both restrict provinces from passing laws in the future and gut multiple Ontario lumber towns; he has passed a budget which damages the federal government’s fiscal position while improving that of Alberta and he has repaired our relationship with the domestically unpopular George Bush by quietly signing Canada on to further missile defense. Truly it is easy to get along with other countries if you give them everything they want; and truly politics is the art of bribing people with their half of their own money while doing what you want with the other half.

Stephen Harper has a bright future, if he can get to an election before Southern Ontario collapses along with GM and Ford; and before Northern Ontario loses entire towns due to timber restrictions.

Apple, anyone?