The word out of Ottawa is that next month's throne speech will lay out a plan to limit federal spending powers. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made this part of his platform during last year's election.

It's not clear whether the government is proposing a constitutional amendment, or simply an act of Parliament. But one way or another, if the prime minister is successful, it appears the shape of federalism in Canada is about to change.

Harper's case is not without merit. The Canadian Constitution gives separate spheres of responsibility to the central government and to the provinces. Health care, education and most of the social services are supposed to be exclusively provincial jurisdictions. So are natural resources, municipal affairs and provincial court administration.

Yet over the years, the federal government has tried repeatedly to stake a claim in some of these areas. In the health-care field, Ottawa fines provinces if they allow doctors to bill patients for essential medical services.

And just last year, the Conservatives introduced a national child-care plan costing $2 billion a year. Critics point out that duplication of this kind wastes money and diverts federal politicians from issues in their own backyard.

That case gained strength last week with the release of a Statistics Canada report showing that federal spending on infrastructure, like roads and seaports, has declined precipitously over the last 30 years. If Ottawa would quit meddling in provincial affairs and attend to its own responsibilities, the argument goes, we'd all be better off.

However, that's not what the prime minister has in mind. He fully intends to keep giving the provinces federal dollars for provincial services. His proposal is simply that Ottawa should hand over the money without strings attached….

But Harper believes the federal government has no business imposing national standards in areas of provincial jurisdiction. He prefers to write each province a cheque, and leave them to build standalone programs suited purely to their own needs.

No doubt that would be popular with local politicians, and nowhere more than in Quebec, where the Conservatives hope to make electoral inroads.

But it leads in the direction of each province becoming an island, with isolated programs and widely differing standards. One result could be a more sharply divided Canada, in which the poorer regions are left to fend for themselves, while more affluent areas pull steadily away.

It will also make it nearly impossible, over time, to co-ordinate essential services across the country. …

It will be impossible to establish national performance standards for education, or measure how our school system stacks up against other countries, if each province builds a firewall with its neighbours. And we can forget tracking teachers who have committed sex offences, if there are 10 separate registries across the country and none of them interconnect.

In fairness Canada is already a patchwork quilt, and some of these problems exist right now. But the prime minister is proposing to institutionalize this "system" -- to make it, in effect, the law of the land.

Concerns of this kind would carry less weight if there were already a reasonable degree of conformity between regions. Manifestly there is not…