Yes I generally agree with you on most points. I don't mean to hold the provinces as blameless in this conversation. Provinces starving cities has been a thin

Yes I generally agree with you on most points. I don't mean to hold the provinces as blameless in this conversation. Provinces starving cities has been a thing ever since I was young and it hasn't changed. They'd rather spend money on sports stadiums than trains; the overpass situation in Quebec in the 2000s was a good example. That said, I am a bit more sympathetic to belligerent provinces now than I was before. The culture in Ottawa is based around national elect-ability; which is to say, elect-ability in Quebec and Ontario. This means there is a major cultural difference and a linguistic difference that neither province nor federal government really tries to overcome. Seeing the Western provinces as some sort of Canadian version of Texas is an online over-simplification. WRT to the intra-city transit, I agree but giving credit here is tough, this should have been the policy since the 60s. Instead we had fiscal austerity, downloading responsibilities to poorly funded municipalities, and other tricks to get a "balanced budget" and we patted ourselves on the back for it.