Among those few bright lights was John Baird, a veteran of the taxpayer-friendly Harris government in Ontario. In response to a “question” from NDP Leader Jack Layton as to why the Conservatives seemingly hate seniors and the middle class, Mr. Baird turned his guns on the Liberals for cutting spending in the 1990s.

“The last time Canada faced hard economic times, the previous government cut spending by literally $25 billion to Canada’s important social programs.”

That thud you hear is my jaw bouncing off of the desk. With an established record as a small-government advocate and the accomplishment of shepherding the Federal Accountability Act through the House, attacking the Liberals for their forgotten era of relative fiscal restraint was disheartening.

Full disclosure: John Baird is my MP and someone that I consider to be a friend; but despite the baseless nature of Mr. Layton’s question (including a dead-wrong assertion that inflation is high), it matters not which party is in power when sound public policy initiatives are carried out. That it happened to be the Liberals (with significant pressure from the Reform Party) that cut spending to balance the budget does not alter the fact that it was the right thing to do.  Health-care, welfare, most social policy for that matter, are the constitutional responsibility of the provinces.

With so few allies inside of the House of Commons in 2010, taxpayers should hope that this statement by Mr. Baird was inspired by heated debate and not by a belief that cutting federal spending on provincial programs is inherently wrong.

While Nova Scotia’s government may not be prudent in how it spends the taxes it levies, it is markedly more transparent than Ottawa in how it is spent, going so far as to publish the pension eligibility of each MLA.

In New Brunswick, Shawn Graham’s Liberal government – for all its recent fumblings of late and a pesky deficit – is leading the way in fiscal reform by both lowering and flattening personal income taxes. While still not yet competitive with Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan, it is quickly gaining momentum and may yet overtake lardy-Ontario.

The east-coast may still be an economic  basket case, but these two provinces have shown limited leadership on these respective fronts. Time will tell if Ottawa drops its colonial attitude towards both taxpayers and what it considers to be the hinterlands.

Today, Philip Resnick and Reg Whitaker in The Tyee wrote an open letter calling on the Liberal, New Democratic and Green leaders to make such a deal.  While infinitely shorter than the Harper and Flanagan essay, the letter’s tone and suggestions are remarkably similar, especially in its call for electoral cooperation and a coalition government.

Some may cry foul over any coalition government overthrowing a party with a plurality of seats, such as last winter’s ill-fated attempt.  While that coalition arrangement was illegitimate in the eyes of most voters, a coalition that is announced before voters cast their ballots – knowing that such an arrangement will follow should no party win a majority of seats – would be legitimate. The quality of such a government is an entirely separate debate.

One cannot help but see “Our Benign Dictatorship” leap off the page of this open letter in both the diagnose of the “problem” (in their respective times) as well as the prescription for what should be done.