That's politics. What's wrong with the feds getting some credit for cutting taxes? The provinces could have announced a simultaneous increase in their PST rates and taken up the room and the wrath of citizens. If you want to raise taxes you should be held to account by your citizens.
Who said there was anything wrong with it? The tax cuts (Conservative and Liberal before that) have always been controlled in such a way that it would be political suicide for a province to adjust their tax rates simultaneously. Both federal governments did this quite purposefully.
Liberals were far better at this game than the Conservatives. They managed to dramatically reduce taxation at federal level, while making it very difficult for provinces to not follow suit (see various funding contracts), while pushing a good chunk of their expenses down to the provincial level.
In other words, they came out golden and made the provinces look like the bad guys.
Job #1 is to get reelected. This often means appearances
I don't mind tax cuts. They target my income group quite specifically and leaves money in my pocket. When infrastructure and everything else starts falling apart, I can pretty easily pickup and leave -- including registering my business elsewhere.
Recently assisted in helping one of my employers leave Canada for Anguilla (tax-free for personal income). Including the time to build the new house it only took about 9 months.
Tax cuts won't keep me here. Having a superior quality of life in Canada compared to other places in the world does.
It wasn't the wisest comments on their part, but it's not really relevant to this topic. The government of Ontario is an independent entity. It did not have to follow the federal government's advice.
Have you ever read the contracts (strings) tied to federal funding? You either follow their advice or you don't get funding. Heck, it's how they enforce huge sections of legislation, to think party policies don't slip into things like the recent infrastructure agreement between Ontario and the feds is silly.
Why do you think it takes years to negotiate the damn things? Read a few. They're not as public as they should be but your reps (province and federal) can get you copies of the complete agreement instead of the cleaner summaries typically made public.