Painintheass I don't know about that story of yours depicting everyone (or enough to characterise the areas this way) as illiterate. I've been to several reserves throughout southern Alberta during the summer when I was in university and the conditions were third world (well the Blood reserve anyway, second world at best for a few others). Everyone I came into contact with could read and write. Period. There were no exceptions. Now this is a bad example since the federal government gives money to the reserves and in your scenario the poor rural areas would be funded by the provincial government. I don't know why you fail to understand that a great deal of poverty in Quebec is the result of poor decisions by your leaders and not the rest of Canada.
Oh ya and I forgot to mention that the federal government gives a shit load of money to reserves so that everyone will have an opportunity to make a decent living for themselves but it's usually embezzled by the Band Councils. A lot of money goes to Quebec so as far as I can tell the only way that there should be conditions like the ones you described is if your leaders are fucking you. You might want to take a look at how the equalization payments are broken down per province.
http://www.fin.gc.ca/FEDPROV/eqpe.html
Saskatchewan needs less than 1/7th the amount that Quebec does per capita... wtf