From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

Everybody recognizes those words as the communist credo. It will soon be the Canadian motto.

From the Toronto Star:

My grandfather had a saying: when they give, take; when they take — scream. Advice to consider, as you ponder how last year Ottawa took $23 billion more from Ontario taxpayers than it returned in transfers, services and benefits. To put things in perspective, $23 billion is almost as much as the province spends annually on health care.

And as we gave, others received: last year, Newfoundland benefited from net federal inflows of $2.6 billion, Nova Scotia was ahead by $4.4 billion and Quebec was up $3 billion.

Four other provinces received additional billions. Albertans, and above all Ontarians footed the bill.

Ontario's budget is in deficit, we've gone years without substantial tax reductions, living standards lag those in the United States and our level of university funding is dead last in Canada. "Other provinces are using our tax dollars to outspend us," is how one senior official in the McGuinty government describes it.

In Toronto last week, the city contorted itself over a budget shortfall of a few million dollars — yet each year, the federal government takes $5.4 billion more out of the Toronto economy than it puts back in, according to a 2002 study by the Toronto Board of Trade.

Federal policy has always been based on the assumption that voters in the receiving provinces can add, but voters in Ontario can't subtract. Maybe it's true: Ottawa has been buying votes in have-not provinces for years, always putting it on your tab.

Come election time, have you ever gotten mad at them because of it? No, not even once.

And we might never scream. Last June, when we reelected the corrupt Liberal Party, we proved ourselves not to be tigers on the world stage, but sheep. Or lemmings. Sticking with an idea that may have proved well for our parents, insisting that sooner or later it would benefit us, too. Time and again we elect the crooks, and time and again they take our money. We act surprised, but no one is more surprised than the crooks themselves, who continue to get away with it. They're laughing at us!

The Conservatives are often said to be hamstrung by their legacy as a regional grievance party, but perhaps all they need is a bigger region, and a more saleable grievance. After all, the cash register provinces of B.C., Alberta and Ontario have 62 per cent of the Canadian population, and their standards of living are depressed by the federal government's decision to make its main business that of inter-provincial wealth redistribution. The cash registers also have a majority of the seats in the House.

Besides, it's not like all the money sent to the regions is helping. As the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies put it last year, "Ottawa's policies of regional development spending, equalization transfers, and regionally extended employment insurance benefits are well-intentioned failures. They have left Atlantic Canada with a per capita gross domestic product that is no more than three-quarters of the national average, well below average productivity levels, and unemployment that is high even as the region suffers from increasingly significant labour shortages."

We cannot continue to allow our money to be taken away from us by our socialist/communist government. And the only way to stop them is not to elect them. Come on, people, you should have learned how democratic elections work back in fifth grade social studies classes. What's that? You didn't learn about elections, because you were learning about "diverse cultures" and "alternative lifestyles"? Well, when you're done with the lawsuit against your elementary school for failing to give you an education, feel free to look to Iraq to see how democracy works. Lemmings.