It grates Albertans when they go to a province receiving equalization and see better provincially funded facilities than in Alberta.  
The underperformance of the primary and secondary education systems in Atlantic Canada is so poor that the region's economy underperforms AFTER more than 50 years of equalization.
As for Quebec, equalization allows it to provide low cost university education and daycare.  The prime benefactors of both programs are not the poor, but the middle and upper class.  I have heard Quebec commentators defend both policies on the basis of social justice.  From the outside, it looks like a government bribing the voters with equalization money.