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And again: “The corollary of a legitimate attempt by one participant in Confederation to seek an amendment to the Constitution is an obligation on all parties to come to the negotiating table.” 

When Kenney demands changes to the program, he is drawing on a genuine, even justified, though sometimes misplaced sense of grievance in the province

Now, there’s a lot to disagree with in the Court’s ruling.  The duty to negotiate on the part of any province seeking to amend the constitution is obvious enough, as a practical reality if nothing else: it can’t do so unilaterally.  But the duty to negotiate on the rest was something the court made up, at least as a matter of law. 

Still, that’s what the Court ruled.  And so far as the ruling applies — so far as it could be enforced — it clearly applies not just to secession but to a constitutional amendment. 

Would it apply to equalization?  Only so far as it involved a constitutional amendment. “ The principle of making equalization payments” is entrenched in the Constitution.  The particular details of its design are not. 

In the original Morton version, the referendum was “to remove the equalization program from the Constitution.”  That would seem to invoke the Court’s “duty to negotiate.”  But Kenney’s proposal is simply to remove non-renewable resource revenues from the equalization formula. 

It’s a stretch to see how that would require a constitutional amendment.  It’s probably clear that I don’t think the rest of Canada has a duty to negotiate even if it did.  But it would certainly be under no obligation to respond to any demand for non-constitutional change, referendum or no. 

Indeed, it would be almost obliged not to — otherwise every Tom, Dick and P.E.I. would be holding referendums to back its demands in every one of our endless intramural squabbles. 

Equalization is a program sorely in need of reform.  But the very worst way to go about it is with the kind of pressure tactic Kenney is proposing.