These have been a bad few weeks for taxpayers. In the run-up to an inevitable federal election, Prime Minister Paul Martin is pulling out all the stops - and all Canadians' wallets - to win votes for his troubled government. The PM seems determined to leave no cash unspent in a transparent attempt to bribe taxpayers with their own money - $6.8 billion since he made the April 20 "deal with the devil" - Jack Layton's NDP.

Now another deal has been stuck, and it's equally heretical. On Saturday Mr. Martin announced that the federal government would give an additional $5.7 billion over five years to the province of Ontario, to redress the so-called "fiscal imbalance." Premier Dalton McGuinty has been loudly complaining about this imbalance for months, and even set up a government website at taxpayers' expense to plead his case. According to the premier, there exists a $23 billion gap between what Ontario pays into the Federation and what it gets back. He further claims that over the past decade, this gap has ballooned by 1000 per cent - and has been asking for $5 billion from Ottawa to help close it.

But Premier McGuinty is playing a political game of his own. The promised cash arrived just in time for his provincial budget, which will be handed down Wednesday, May 11. The budget is expected to feature a whopping $6 billion deficit, leaving no room for new spending. At the same time, the premier wants to implement the Rae Report on Education which recommends dropping billions on universities and colleges, and also wants to cut the province's waiting lists for health care. The solution Not prudent fiscal management, but more money - wrung this year from a desperate federal Liberal minority government on the eve of an election.

Never mind the fact that the $23 billion gap exists chiefly in Mr. McGuinty's head. A close look at the books reveals that under the premier's watch, Ontario's fiscal imbalance did not grow - it actually narrowed. According to the provincial government's last Economic Outlook, the federal government transferred $11.6 billion to Ontario in 2004-05, 17.5% more than it did the year before. At the same time, the federal government collected $79.6 billion in revenue from Ontario, only 5% more than the previous year, due to a sluggish economy that struggled under the weight of Mr. McGuinty's decision to hike personal income taxes and cancel business tax cuts.

The cause of Ontario's woes isn't a new imbalance, but the old equalization formula. If our political leaders are serious about addressing fiscal inequities, side deals like the current Martin-McGuinty pact are not a cure. The federal government should either reduce the amount of money it takes from "have" provinces or transfer tax points, to allow wealth-generating jurisdictions to keep more of what they produce, and stop rewarding the under-performance of "have not" provinces.

The other long-term solution to Ontario's fiscal woes is not to point fingers, but to contain costs, something Premier McGuinty seems incapable of doing. Under his government, per capita spending (adjusted for inflation) has hit the same highs as under Bob Rae's NDP. Three more years of deficits will add $12 billion to the provincial debt and cost taxpayers billions more in interest payments. At the same time, Mr. McGuinty imposed the biggest tax increase in a decade, hiking middle-income taxpayers' bills by an average of 16%.

The Prime Minister shouldn't reward the premier's financial mismanagement with more money, but with a political cold shoulder. But in these desperate times, Mr. Martin has cast aside all semblance of his past fiscal prudence. It remains to be seen whether taxpayers will buy his latest devilish deal on Election Day.