Or, if I was a province like AB that's paid out a quarter-trillion dollars in equalization payments in the last two or three decades to prop up sqaundering basket cases like QC, maybe it's time to think about that whole independence thing seriously.

Hehehehe...you are a gas. That is one of the myths of the anarcho-libertarians: "everyone else believes or will believe in me and follow me to the cliffs!" But how does that dream differ for Ontario which is having to pay its greater share from the tax base as opposed to a nationalized resource?

Oh, it's totally unfair. I've just been reading the paper by Ontario and Quebec elites about how Alberta's ruining the country by making them looking so bad, and I'm just throwing out some ideas how they could stop doing dot.

dot -> that.

Nice quote from Sabine Herold's group in France from Reason:

<blockquote>
Alternative Liberale dares to answer the French youth....We don't worry about whether we should be called "liberal," "libertarian" or "free market." We aim only to create a free society. Our project is to transform our state so that it serves French citizens, not vice versa. We believe in freedom of choice in any area of human life, whether it's the economy, social issues or values. In all respects, we want to give the French their freedom back: freedom to choose the school where they want their children to be taught, freedom to negotiate their working conditions, freedom to choose their health insurance, freedom of speech on any issue. France is dying from its lack of freedom.
</blockquote>

Yes, I see. Parisian riots are influencing the equalization discourse. I'm less worried aobut that since I passed my junior elite test last week.

I cannot count how many Conservatives have told me that Quebec is welcome to leave Confederation but that it should do so only with the land it entered with. Ha ha, they snigger; thinking of all that James Bay revenue. All I can say this is a damn fine idea and should be repeated ad nauseum to whining Albertans. We are keeping the tar sands (and I could care less if the door hits your ass on the way out).

That is gold! Like the million monkeys typing to create a Shakespearian sonnet, I have actually stumbled upon the makings of the prefect retort, though it needed gleaning by the master retortitician himself.

Same response re: AB and QC. Canada doesn't have the guts to slam the door, so there's no worry about arse hitting.

Unlike Quebec, Alberta hasn't the guts to leave nor, let's be honest, even the slightest interest. And that is despite the plaintive wailing and gnashing of Western neo-anarcho-libertarians who would take their <10% of the provincial population and say that not obeying them is undemocratic...sort of like Albertan conservatives in relation to the rest of Canada come to think of it. Frankly, as usual, Nova Scotia was the only province to have taken an honest stand on such matters electing majority separatist representation in 1867. And see where that got us.

Ah, but you need guts to go take Alberta's oil revenue to redistribute it. You've had the takers in power for the last 12 or whatever years, it's hardly the time to go gnashing your teeth now that an AB-friendly PM is in power and probably has quite significant different ideas about how things should be organized.

That is exactly the time as I want to be ahead of the trend. Plus we can take cash in lieu.

Ah ... just did a little more reading. So the federal govt. has the ability to tax persons, corporations, add levy or fee just about anything. And they can pretty well make any reasonable and many unreasonable formulae for distributing "equalization". But, instead of just going out there and doing that (say, introduce a X% "oil extraction tax") do I understand correctly that they _want to raid provincial treasuries_ to get even more tax dollars? Or am I reading everything wrong?

I am not sure if I mislead you or other information did. When I suggested that there was a difference between taxes and resource wealth reallocation, was saying there is a difference in taking my earnings as a citizen and taking a cut of a government-owned natural resource, the former being less acceptable to me. But as to the mechanism of how the Feds effect equalization I am not sure. I would expect it is under various agreements based on constitutional powers. There is the whole direct and indirect taxation thing that I vaguely recall.

I think we are stumbling close to section 92A(4) of the Constitution.

The present equalization scheme is a disaster, esp. when you exclude the acutal resource wealth of a province like Alberta from the calculation. This exclusion should have had a sunset clause, or "revenue cap" whereby it would be re-instated when revenues hit a certain level (not terribly ingenius, really).

This present scheme creates an imbalance of wealth, so that it does not "equalize". It properly should be called an " unequal wealth transfer system". It's a mess and I do not understand why there is not more outrage in Ontarians about this picking of their pockets.

If it truly were an equalization system, then a "rising tide" of wealth, would lift all boats, and Alberta's good fortune would be shared equitably with the other Provinces. How can it be called equalization, when the greatest source of its wealth is "off the table".

I usually find myself agreeing with David, but on this point, to follow up on the Bill Gates comparison, I ask David this:

You, David, and your cousin Bill Gates have agreed to support your poor cousin Al, in proportion to your incomes, to top up Al's income so that he can meet some basic level needs. But Gates had a clause in the Agreement that allows him to exlude any, any, reference to his Microsoft earnings and his Microsoft holdings, and as it turns out his "adjusted" income is basically the same as yours, so that your both contributing 50/50 to Al. Now, if that seems "fair" and "equal" to you...I have a little "fixer upper" in Biloxi right along the coast that you might be interested in that has had some "minor" wind damage...

As an Albertan, I have no quarrel with the concept of equalization, but SayNay, I have to question your reasoning. When AB is sending 3x per capita to Ottawa than Ontario, how is it that we are not sharing the wealth? AB has (I'm guessing) higher incomes, so therefore pays higher federal taxes (same with the corporations). What is it you would like to see, since Syncrude & Suncor's revenues are taxable? And will you apply those same rules to Saskatchewan, now that their Premier has seen the light & is courting corporate development of THEIR oilsands? Or is that different, somehow?

Candace, don't get me wrong - as anyone knows, I'm a big fan of Alberta and Albertans (generally independent, hard-working, tough and self-made) who view government as a vehicle set up to provide basic services, with minimal costs, rather than some behemoth that everyone should either be working for, or working to sustain and build larger and larger.

But on this one, it is difficult to see it any other way. You can not get around the fact that any "equalization" scheme must begin first with the assessment of the wealth of each of the partners, and their respective abilities to contribute first to their own basic services and then to the services of their needy partners. In Budget 2006, the Alberta government produces its 13th consecutive balanced budget, which will continue to address infrastructure needs and improve services for Albertans while lowering taxes and increasing savings.

All one has to do is look at the highlights of Alberta's 2006 Budget, which includes a $4.1 billion surplus forecast (allocated mainly to savings, the Sustainability Fund, and capital investments) along with 16 per cent increase in operating funding for post-secondary education, an additional $127 million in annual funding for continuing care initiatives by 2008-09 and a three-year Capital Plan allocates $13.3 billion for infrastructure, an increase of 45 per cent.

Hey! I'm supposed to be the troublemaker around here. Per capita, with respect, is no way to measure redistribution of wealth any more than it is a measure of wealth. The oil patch is not worth what it is worth because of the number of people it shares jurisdiction with. What needs expressing into the equalization is all forms of wealth or lack of wealth to come up with a fair and equal understanding of the basic services we all should have in Canada wherever we live. And as Alberta was gifted the resource from the whole nation for free in 1930, it hardly sits in the mouth to now say there is some sort of elemental nature to it.

You're just trying to make up the rules as you go along, Al. The deal in 1930 is the deal they made; now you're saying, "oh gee, I don't like that deal so much, since you're getting so much from it, give it back".

There's several other erroneous assumptions going on here too:

Firstly that equalization is a wealth redistribution scheme rather than a way of topping up services. If mineral wealth is included in the scheme, you're basically saying that it's not a provincial resource, it's a national resource. That may be the Canada you want, but it's not the Canada you have.

Secondly, that the have-not provinces don't have any responsibilities to themselves. As per previous conversations, SK has not until recently started utilizing their oil resources; BC is absolutely refusing to utilize their possible offshore resources -- why should AB be punished for this? QC has been massively gifted with mineral wealth and human resources, but to go back to Say Nay's Billg analogy, why should Bill start having to tap into his MS stocks -- contrary to the previous agreements about what he'd have to share -- to subsidize his flaky cousin Quebec, who wastes all her money on Feng Shui experts, dog grooming and only works 15 hours a week in the local food collective but somehow still believes she's entitled to drive an Escalade.

No, the states-rights-shifters are the ones who try to say "provinces when they created Canada (<i>never happened that way</i>) brought resources with them (<i>even though they didn't</i>) so have to be treated like semi-sovereign states (<i>even though they are not</i>). You maka things up, Monsieur. I points the fingers back achoo.

I have no idea what you're saying there, Al. Do provinces own their mineral rights or not; in particular, does Alberta have constitutional control over it's oil wealth?

Don't toy with me. You know I have the right to be unclear and speak on both sides of any issue.

Besides it is all in the right of the Queen no matter which level controls it.