I'm not sure I understand why their surplus has ballooned. That's just bad financial planning. They cut all their public services, privatized the rest, and now they have a huge oil surplus. Doesn't it seem like they're either a) taxing too much or b) not spending enough or c) both? And, of course, trying to keep the money out of the hands of the country is sort of forgetting the definition of "country" a little bit.

They have this goo that you can suck out of the ground at 40 US dollars production cost and sell for around 65. The province gets a cut of profits according to some formula. Now that it is solidly over 40 bucks to sell, there is no obstacle to production capital costs and production expands with little risk thus increasing the provincial windfall and the localized hot air about entrepreneurial skills.

psst: they get the lion's share of the revenue from natural gas, not oil. But who cares about little facts when you're a smug Ontario who wants to stick his mits on someone else's lucre?

Smug? Materialist separatist westerners have cornered the market on that, too, leaving nothing left. We have to do with the leftover emotions like stunned disbelief and mild disgust as excess and selfishess. And the future decades worth reservoir discussed in the tar sands is oil. Nice try. But don't worry. We'll be here holding up the country even after the bonus is taken out of the equation and, who know, after the good times run out, too.

Ugly 'Murican here, huh? Not knowing the ins-and-outs of Canadian governance I'm not sure I get what the problem is.

California could run a surplus(ha!, that's funny) and why would the fed be within rights to come in and snatch some up? What's different up there that the fed should come in and take some?

Or, it could just be evidence that moving stuff of the public dole makes it more efficient. I don't know. I don't live up there and so I don't know what the situation on the ground is.
ANd where's Al's cable company $50? That's what I want to know. ;)

And you may just need that Arctic Ocean Navy. If what i've read is true there's going to be one helluva rowe over who actually controls(and can tax passage thru) those waters.

We have a little thing called equalization, ry, whereby the well off provinces support the less well off for things like health care, education and transportation...and selective slush funds that would be handled in the US by your Congress. Not having that sort of mechanism up here we had to make something up. It flows through the Feds but is supposed to be a flow thought but it isn't and the new Federal government looks like it is going to remove oil and gas revenue from the equalization formula which just happens to benefit their main base of support in Alberta where all the oil and gas is under the guise of helping Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where all the rest of the oil and gas is. <p>Your diploma in Canadian Studies is now 27% complete, ry. Next lesson? Gordons Lightfoot, Pinsent and Sinclair: compare and contrast.

G1&2, can, in a pinch, sing...

A couple of points on energy revenues. The province and people of Alberta have been paying huge equalization for decades and have not sen much by way of bootstrapping on the part of the have not provinces - unless you want to count half of Saskachewan and a quarter of the able bodied in Newfoundland moving there.

The oil and gas are not renewable resources. (Though I suspect both will last for a good long time.) As such they should be looked at as capital assets which are being sold rather than as a regular, renewable, economic activity.

At least half of every dollar being spent on energy development in Alberta is spent outside Alberta mainly in Ontario. (And, no, I don't have the cite for that and am too busy to find it.)

But, and here is the bottom line, unlike the last time the feds decided to intervene in the Alberta economy in the name of all the Canadas, this time there will be a quiet, determined, well financed resistance. And the reason is pretty simple. Alberta is entirely unimpressed with the glorious gifts the federal government has dropped on its clients over the last couple of decades. They are unwilling to see more of what they regard as their money pissed away on bogus advertising contracts, absrd gun registries and a Trudeautopian conception of the federal government as somehow important in its own right. They have seen waste, deficits, absurd underfunding of the military, looney overfunding of the pretense of bilingualism and general mismanagement. They have seen Ontario and Quebec industtires, and I use the term loosely, receive billions in federal and provincial subsidies.

So, this time, having elected a CPC government, the Albertans are not expecting and will not tolerate any capitulation to the endlessly have not provinces - (50 years really is long enough to come up with something better than a baseball cap and a "need food" sign) if paying for that capitulation will involve grabbing Alberta's energy revenue. They will not stand for it and, if it is tried, they will leave. In sorrow, rather than anger, but leave nonetheless.

So because 10% have so much and they are really really determined not to share that which was given by God's grace and the Federal transfer of the 1920s we should all be impressed? I would rather they left than they pose like the injured and get indignant. Your characterization "Trudeautopian conception of the federal government as somehow important in its own right" goes right to the heart of the new loonie neo-con separatist moral economics dingbattery, though, so is to be applauded for its honesty. It leaves Canada holding the door, people like me paying for the new Tory social order and asking is there anything else we can pick up for ye who do not like to pull your weight according to your ability.<p>We can only pray for the rapid advent of practical hydrogen technology and the final act of the moral play you and yours started in which we witness the reconciliations due hubris.

"We can only pray for the rapid advent of practical hydrogen technology and the final act of the moral play you and yours started in which we witness the reconciliations due hubris."
Don't know anything about hubris and moral plays(at least I haven't been trying to make one consciously), but the hydrogen economy? Al, please, tell me you aren't really gung ho on this?
4 reasons why ry isn't behind it:
1) The main by-product of most known reactions for industrial scale production of hydrogen gives off large sums of COx gases(we'er talking metric tons per day).
2) An internal combustion economy based on burning hydrogen doesn't end anthropomorphic Green House gasses. Matter of fact, since water is nearly effective as CO2 at trapping heat(product of bonds vibrations), the change will be negligible. (People fall over themselves when they hear that water is the product of the combustion reactions. Water's harmless, right? (Shakes head at those whose scientific knowledge is lacking on this point))
3) Ozone is highly reactive wrt hydrogen. While this will get rid of ozone problems low in the atmosphere it presents a problem elsewhere(fewer smog alerts and possible asthma kids growing up in big cities(though I'm not sure about the studies on the linkage)). And no system is 100% secure. There'll be leaks. How many hoopties/held-together-by-bailing-wire-and-spit-clunkers are on Canadian roads(there's lots of 'em here in quasi-rural Indiana). (points two and three have been studied at Cal-tech and JPL).
4) Nuclear electric is a better way to go as a midterm range(15-50 year) sol'n. Somewhat sustainable(can enrich uranium, plutonium, etc., cesium again). And near zero emmissions.
The byproducts can be stored to be used again(Yucca mountain)----when we run out of easily used fissionables.

Sounds like social security/welfare but not since it's(equalization) pure block grants from one place to another.

In my world personal jet packs are fueled by the cores of lettuce heads and the thick woody stems of broccoli.