Articles from Canada and the World Backgrounder (December 1, 2005)

Title	Author	Type	Words
Balancing the riches: equalization is one of four major federal transfer programs. The others are the Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer, and the Territorial Formula Financing (the main source of revenue for territorial governments). Today, the total amount of the equalization program is around 10 billion dollars a year.			2035
Flexible federalism.			1893
Harrumph.			410
Losing ground: Ontario is the only province in Canada never to have received equalization payments, but that might change.			1832
Powerless and penniless: more than 80 percent of Canadians live in cities and the vast majority live in four large metropolitan areas--Greater Toronto, Greater Montreal, Southwestern British Columbia, and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Any of these four regions could make a legitimate claim to province-hood based on population alone.			1628
Quote ... unquote.			279
Ready for another round? Relatively quiet for almost a decade, the issue of Quebec separatism seems to be bubbling up to the surface again.			2122
Shared government: federalism is a method of governing seen as providing harmony among peoples with ethnic, cultural, or religious differences but who want to live under the same political system.			1768
Wealth management: some observers say Alberta has so much money from its oil fields it doesn't know what to do with it all. Critics say the province needs to plan for the day the oil runs out.			1865