I think it is less about needing a thank you and more about being sick of being told F-you. When Alberta wants to expand its industry through more tidewater access, something your article shows to clearly benefit all of Canada through outsized tax contributions, everyone lines up to tell them where to go. From Quebec, to BC to first nations. Kind of ironic that the people who pull the most financially from this country, are also the loudest voices against developing its economy. And for those who disagree that BC is a have not province. Just wait, Eby is working on that...
The other parts of Canada that'll accommodate a pipeline have got real concerns about potential environmental impacts, and they'll also benefit a lot less than Alberta. I think the environmental impacts are overblown (the risks aren't as high as people think, and they can be mitigated), but they're also not frivolous. So do the work to persuade them - that's what you have to do in a confederation. It sucks that big international activist groups targeted pipelines as part of their war on oil. That's also out of Alberta's (and Canada's) control.
Where Alberta has got really solid ground is pushing for reform to the regulatory approval process. It was snarled up before the Trudeau era, and Trudeau made it worse. Alberta should be able to find common ground with other provinces on that issue: Quebec faces hurdles for hydro projects, Ontario faces hurdles for nuclear and mining. Get that fixed and then a pipeline proposal has got a fair chance of making it through approval without getting jammed up by small and astroturfed activist groups. It still doesn't remove the need to persuade other Canadians to support a pipeline, though.
Alberta cannot simply dictate to people in British Columbia, and those in First Nations, to do this or not do that, simply because of "tidewater access".
Nor, for that matter, can Ottawa do so.
And no, of course I do not believe that every political approval process should be readily subject to impediments thrown up by vociferous minorities.
But the last thing we should be encouraging is dialogue that encourages a resort to violence and to attitudes that permit the majority to run roughshod over local sensibilities.
Rob tangentially touches on a very good point: that is, that Ontario could be easily sliced up into several Provinces, given the varying political cultures found within different parts of the Province.
There is the North, the mid-North, Southwestern Ontario, the GTA, the Eastern Counties, and Niagara. On a map of individual political ridings, there is a lot of Blue in some areas, and a lot of Red in others.
I live in a London Ontario riding that would vote red if the Liberals ran a dead skunk, painted red. Ten minutes north of me the electoral map is nothing but blue.
Most of Ontario geographically, is not unlike Alberta itself. In fact, we are a lot more like Alberta than, perhaps, Alberta would like to admit.
Agree Ontario for one is a ripe candidate for a breakup into more culturally homogeneous pieces. And outside of Toronto the culture is definitely more maker than taker. Certainly West of Thunder Bay people relate more to Winnipeg than to the woke groomers of Metro Toronto. And IIRC when I lived in London in the late 60s it definitely was a white collar town with Insurance Companies and a University and a community college - that barely tolerated Ford’s assembly plant in St Thomas next door.
And breaking Ontario up would hopefully result in people paying less attention to a bozo like Doug Ford who can’t figure out how to pour whiskey from a bottle and has done more harm than anyone else to Canada’s ability to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
However, I was surprised by your failure to mention the way in which successive Conservative Party politicians have sought to play the populist blame game.
It happens almost all the time, often when the Government of Alberta has been embroiled in a corruption scandal, or has been called out in court rulings, or has deliberately pitted Albertans against other Albertans, as we saw during the manoeuvring that eventually led to last year’s disastrous teachers’ strike.
Decades of propaganda and conditioning, leading to a situation where, even now, people still claim that they were damaged by the NEP, which was ended more than four decades ago.
As an Albertan born and bred, but who now lives elsewhere in Canada, I am repelled by the claims of the separatists—and the perfidy of politicians who, like children playing with fire, encourage their the separatists’ grievances and rage.
I was not in Alberta during the NEP. But please note that the fallout from those times still affects families and individuals. It was nasty. Central Canada wanted to hurt the west. Get a grip.
I was living in Alberta as a young man. Just entering the job market. I found a job. My partner and I made a life for ourselves.
Four plus decades. It was a VERY long time ago. But apparently not long enough for every narrative-spinning politician and bloody minded partisan to continue milking it for political reasons.
Those 10 year old kids whose parents lost their house, and so they faced major unpleasant life changes, are now in their 50's. Many of their parents who went through it as adults are now in their 70's will still be alive for some time yet. No matter how well-to-do they are now, they will grasp that the party that caused the NEP awfulness is still at it, disadvantaging the west.
I note that the federal Liberals are not meeting the timeline of their agreement with the UCP. Neither are they paying for expenses that none of our competitor countries require.
My reading of this article says differently. It is NOT just about the "current government", but about attitudes and beliefs. These are not formed in years, but over decades.
“Stirring the pot” has worked for Politicians of all stripes in Alberta with the Conservatives leading the charge. The NEP maybe long gone but it left a legacy that was resurrected by Trudeau 2.0. My great grandfather came to the west as a NWMP recruit, long before Alberta was a province. Americans were creating havoc back then as they are now. Sadly, regional division has become an end in itself with many politicians. Threading the needle to victory has led to the unraveling of national unity.
My experience is that Alberta’s expectation is that this gratitude should be expressed through voting for a Conservative government. Voting for the Liberals again is perceived as a slap in the face and no other party is viable at this point. Meanwhile, Alberta more than anybody, is pushing that Conservative party further and further right making them unelectable in most of the country without a massive vote split on the left.
Yes, this perception is being exacerbated by the Liberals and the media, but Poillievre is more right leaning than O’Toole or Scheer were. I don’t know how you’d argue otherwise, so its not like there is some effort being made to come to an alternative compromise. This pushes the rest of the country to believe that Alberta wants dominance, not compromise. Some in Alberta seem to feel like its their turn to be in charge, and the rest of the country should just deal with it.
The rest of the country forced Trudeau out. He’s not unemployed because Alberta and the West hates him. He was wildly unpopular and people were tired of him. He was replaced by Carney who is decidedly to the right of Trudeau. Its a step in the right direction, no? Do you want words or actual actions that the country is moving in the right direction.
I grew up hearing about the freight rates and how they enriched central Canada at the expense of the Prairie provinces. The National Energy Program I believe generated some permanent resentment in Alberta. Justin Trudeau's push for climate change I thought was a slap in the face to Alberta. It was also incredibly misguided. We were the only one of the top ten oil producers in the world talking about cutting our production. Covid produced a small group of enraged people in this province who, by taking out thousands of memberships in the UCP, have hijacked the party. Their fury has morphed from being anti-vaxxers to being separatists. I share the sense that Alberta doesn't get the respect we deserve but I don't see separatism as the answer.
There are numerous countries that would like Canada to fall apart so that they could pick up the pieces.
With the war going on in the Middle East, I am always surprised by the number of geographically small countries. All these tiny countries rely on someone else to defend themselves. (Good reason for Canada to rebuild its military). The smaller they get, the less influence they have in their own destiny.
I lived in Quebec during both referendums. That was always my best reason, when talking to my French speaking neighbours, for staying united.
Certainly Albertan's (past and present) deserve recognition for harnessing their natural resources, but let's not forget that having those natural resources to harness is an accident of geography.
And clearly there are other provinces who don't do as good a job of harnessing their own.
Personally, I think the whole concept of a federation of provinces (fiefdoms, more like) is an anachronism and counterproductive to the overall health of the nation. I'm a Canadian, not an Ontarian. Ontario just happens to be the place in Canada where I live. (Because it has the best weather ;) )
Your middle paragraph says it all. The culture of a lot of the eastern provinces seems to be that it’s more lucrative to chase entitlements paid for by the fruit of other’s labor than to actually develop your resources yourself. And this is encouraged by the central Laurentian elites and Quebec French who steal the entitlement funding from the producing provinces. And the pity parties called Federal elections are basically about who will pay what to whom (like the 19th century Indian potlatches banned by the Colonial masters) and how much will be paid by current voters and how much by children born and unborn through borrowing.
I’m told that the weather in the Okanagan valley is second to none in Canada. But yes southwestern Ontario can be nice. It sure as hell isn’t in Ottawa 😹
Yes I did thank you. Makes a lot more sense than the current system.
The ratchet type means testing developed by Ottawa bureaucrats used with income supplements are also a disincentive. Typically when you reach a certain threshold your benefits start to be reduced until they disappear. This discourages seeking employment and drives workers into the cash economy. When I think of the costs to administer means testing I always wonder if it isn’t better to get rid of the testing and just let the tax system recover part of the benefits from high income earners.
Actually, under a negative income tax basic income, high earners would never get benefits.
The transition from being on a single basic income (as a negative tax) to positive tax on your income would be the same line for everyone (except say, seniors and the disabled).
e.g. simple numbers example, which is actually close to the real numbers worked out using 2017 data:
basic personal amount 25K, single rate 40%. So at 0 income, basic income equals 10K. As income increases it gets "taxed" or more accurately, clawed back at 40% so that at 25K there is no basic income and no tax paid. All income in excess of 25K is taxed at 40%. The 40% is a weighted average of fed+prov rates and as I said in the other post, would be a lot higher in QC and the Maritimes.
Make sense. The US has some benefits along that line IIRC. The big issue is to get people who would benefit to file. I know the IRS (I suspect Revenue Canada also) does not release filers’s info to other agencies. Undocumented immigrants who would qualify are still afraid of the info going to immigration law enforcement. And people who employ(illegally) these people would also be reluctant to issue Income documents (T4s or W2s depending in country.
A change in attitude is fine, but does not make up for central Canadas' continual efforts to keep Alberta and the west from reaching our economic potential. Central Canada seems to have a constant need to interfere in business in the west, to avoid the reality of situations, and to work hard to keep us down.
I am a federalist and do not want to leave Canada. I actively cooperate with environmental efforts such as recycling, energy efficient everything and so on. But it's obvious that when Canada as a whole produces some 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gases, climate change was weaponized to aggressively harm the west. If central Canada wants unproven carbon sequestration, they can raise money to pay for it, and should not burden us, investors, or taxpayers with the expense, especially since as they continually point out, oil prices rise and fall. .
Canada generates 1.5 percent of the world's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with only 0.5 percent of the world's population. Roughly speaking, we therefore generate about three times as much per capita than "the average" person globally.
Furthermore, more than 80 percent of Canadians live in urban settings. 73 percent of Canadians, moreover, live in the biggest cities. This means that we do not, as a matter of course, commute daily or even weekly from far-flung places in the country to the places where we work in urban centres.
Our GHG emissions are, therefore, more about industrial policy than they are about transportation needs.
We can reduce emissions (nuclear power instead of natural gas for rendering oil sands into crude oil, for example).
Interesting but really you miss all the major important points that underlie the Alberta feelings and drive the separatist agenda. Of note the Alberta Separatist agenda is totally unlike the Quebec one; in Quebec its all about money. They already own a Constitutionally guaranteed disproportionate sway in Ottawa and Lib-math knows this which is why they concentrate on barely winning enough ridings in Quebec, the east, Ottawa and Toronto. That's all they need so why waste time or effort elsewhere. (If you doubt this look at their handling of firearms owners, they literally do not give a thin watery crap about them because they are not located where the Liberals need them so they can abuse those people to gain votes where they DO want them. Watch the final payout from the confiscation; essentially zero dollars will go to any owners outside of Quebec because the Libs think they MIGHT get some votes there so they will risk paying a gun owner in Quebec before they will give a used wooden nickel to one west of there.) Quebec knows they can select the Prime Minister and run all things financial so they win. And win and win and win. And Alberta sees this and has gotten zero respect, thanks, or support for anything they want to do out of Ottawa. Pipeline anyone? Hell no, we will use Albertas transfer "payments" to buy LNG from Australia before we put in a pipeline to use Albertas.
Alberta literally pays for the east. And they have ZERO say about it. I don't think the latest turn coat Jeneroux is going to suddenly make Albertan's feel all loved in Ottawa. The amount of money extracted is set by Ottawa and enforced from there. Albertans are expected to puke up whatever Ottawa demands and then shut up. And I say this as an Ontarian watching this very closely because rural Ontario is also abused EXACTLY the same way as Alberta. Non-Toronto/Ottawa Ontario probably has more in common with Alberta than any other part of the country when it comes to gross under representation and fiscal complete non-representation.
Until the Constitution is rewritten to actually recognize that PEI deserves ONE seat in Parliament not 4 (NB, NS, and Quebec are also massively over represented), that Senators should actually represent Canadians first and be elected to office not appointed to rubber stamp whatever the current largest party in Parliament shoves their way, and that property ownership means something we will continue to have this fight.
Right now about the only thing that may save this country IS Alberta voting to hand Danielle Smith the papers to potentially separate. The loss of their bank is the only thing that might get the Laurentians to the table because we all know they think they are better than us AND they think that we should be happy to just be tolerated in their presence. Trudeau said it "Quebecers are better" (look up the interview) and Mr. Brookfield reinforced it at the WEF more than once. Until enough Canadians - and this means we need way more than the Libs - get together and change the Government we will continue to be abused by Ottawa and the CBC will tell you you are lucky! If Carney gets a majority and we get 4+ more years of continuing Tru-topian destruction of our history and wealth this country will be done. Alberta WILL leave and so will anyone that is at all portable. All to the benefit of the US. What's left here will rot while serving the Mr. Brookfields of the world.
I think it is less about needing a thank you and more about being sick of being told F-you. When Alberta wants to expand its industry through more tidewater access, something your article shows to clearly benefit all of Canada through outsized tax contributions, everyone lines up to tell them where to go. From Quebec, to BC to first nations. Kind of ironic that the people who pull the most financially from this country, are also the loudest voices against developing its economy. And for those who disagree that BC is a have not province. Just wait, Eby is working on that...
The other parts of Canada that'll accommodate a pipeline have got real concerns about potential environmental impacts, and they'll also benefit a lot less than Alberta. I think the environmental impacts are overblown (the risks aren't as high as people think, and they can be mitigated), but they're also not frivolous. So do the work to persuade them - that's what you have to do in a confederation. It sucks that big international activist groups targeted pipelines as part of their war on oil. That's also out of Alberta's (and Canada's) control.
Where Alberta has got really solid ground is pushing for reform to the regulatory approval process. It was snarled up before the Trudeau era, and Trudeau made it worse. Alberta should be able to find common ground with other provinces on that issue: Quebec faces hurdles for hydro projects, Ontario faces hurdles for nuclear and mining. Get that fixed and then a pipeline proposal has got a fair chance of making it through approval without getting jammed up by small and astroturfed activist groups. It still doesn't remove the need to persuade other Canadians to support a pipeline, though.
Alberta cannot simply dictate to people in British Columbia, and those in First Nations, to do this or not do that, simply because of "tidewater access".
Nor, for that matter, can Ottawa do so.
And no, of course I do not believe that every political approval process should be readily subject to impediments thrown up by vociferous minorities.
But the last thing we should be encouraging is dialogue that encourages a resort to violence and to attitudes that permit the majority to run roughshod over local sensibilities.
Correct.
Sort of. As a separate country they actually can.
Rob tangentially touches on a very good point: that is, that Ontario could be easily sliced up into several Provinces, given the varying political cultures found within different parts of the Province.
There is the North, the mid-North, Southwestern Ontario, the GTA, the Eastern Counties, and Niagara. On a map of individual political ridings, there is a lot of Blue in some areas, and a lot of Red in others.
I live in a London Ontario riding that would vote red if the Liberals ran a dead skunk, painted red. Ten minutes north of me the electoral map is nothing but blue.
Most of Ontario geographically, is not unlike Alberta itself. In fact, we are a lot more like Alberta than, perhaps, Alberta would like to admit.
Agree Ontario for one is a ripe candidate for a breakup into more culturally homogeneous pieces. And outside of Toronto the culture is definitely more maker than taker. Certainly West of Thunder Bay people relate more to Winnipeg than to the woke groomers of Metro Toronto. And IIRC when I lived in London in the late 60s it definitely was a white collar town with Insurance Companies and a University and a community college - that barely tolerated Ford’s assembly plant in St Thomas next door.
And breaking Ontario up would hopefully result in people paying less attention to a bozo like Doug Ford who can’t figure out how to pour whiskey from a bottle and has done more harm than anyone else to Canada’s ability to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
Thank you for this.
However, I was surprised by your failure to mention the way in which successive Conservative Party politicians have sought to play the populist blame game.
It happens almost all the time, often when the Government of Alberta has been embroiled in a corruption scandal, or has been called out in court rulings, or has deliberately pitted Albertans against other Albertans, as we saw during the manoeuvring that eventually led to last year’s disastrous teachers’ strike.
Decades of propaganda and conditioning, leading to a situation where, even now, people still claim that they were damaged by the NEP, which was ended more than four decades ago.
As an Albertan born and bred, but who now lives elsewhere in Canada, I am repelled by the claims of the separatists—and the perfidy of politicians who, like children playing with fire, encourage their the separatists’ grievances and rage.
I was not in Alberta during the NEP. But please note that the fallout from those times still affects families and individuals. It was nasty. Central Canada wanted to hurt the west. Get a grip.
I was living in Alberta as a young man. Just entering the job market. I found a job. My partner and I made a life for ourselves.
Four plus decades. It was a VERY long time ago. But apparently not long enough for every narrative-spinning politician and bloody minded partisan to continue milking it for political reasons.
Those 10 year old kids whose parents lost their house, and so they faced major unpleasant life changes, are now in their 50's. Many of their parents who went through it as adults are now in their 70's will still be alive for some time yet. No matter how well-to-do they are now, they will grasp that the party that caused the NEP awfulness is still at it, disadvantaging the west.
I note that the federal Liberals are not meeting the timeline of their agreement with the UCP. Neither are they paying for expenses that none of our competitor countries require.
I thought he was writing about the current government. I imagine most folks would agree, don't you?
My reading of this article says differently. It is NOT just about the "current government", but about attitudes and beliefs. These are not formed in years, but over decades.
“Stirring the pot” has worked for Politicians of all stripes in Alberta with the Conservatives leading the charge. The NEP maybe long gone but it left a legacy that was resurrected by Trudeau 2.0. My great grandfather came to the west as a NWMP recruit, long before Alberta was a province. Americans were creating havoc back then as they are now. Sadly, regional division has become an end in itself with many politicians. Threading the needle to victory has led to the unraveling of national unity.
My experience is that Alberta’s expectation is that this gratitude should be expressed through voting for a Conservative government. Voting for the Liberals again is perceived as a slap in the face and no other party is viable at this point. Meanwhile, Alberta more than anybody, is pushing that Conservative party further and further right making them unelectable in most of the country without a massive vote split on the left.
Yes, this perception is being exacerbated by the Liberals and the media, but Poillievre is more right leaning than O’Toole or Scheer were. I don’t know how you’d argue otherwise, so its not like there is some effort being made to come to an alternative compromise. This pushes the rest of the country to believe that Alberta wants dominance, not compromise. Some in Alberta seem to feel like its their turn to be in charge, and the rest of the country should just deal with it.
The rest of the country forced Trudeau out. He’s not unemployed because Alberta and the West hates him. He was wildly unpopular and people were tired of him. He was replaced by Carney who is decidedly to the right of Trudeau. Its a step in the right direction, no? Do you want words or actual actions that the country is moving in the right direction.
I grew up hearing about the freight rates and how they enriched central Canada at the expense of the Prairie provinces. The National Energy Program I believe generated some permanent resentment in Alberta. Justin Trudeau's push for climate change I thought was a slap in the face to Alberta. It was also incredibly misguided. We were the only one of the top ten oil producers in the world talking about cutting our production. Covid produced a small group of enraged people in this province who, by taking out thousands of memberships in the UCP, have hijacked the party. Their fury has morphed from being anti-vaxxers to being separatists. I share the sense that Alberta doesn't get the respect we deserve but I don't see separatism as the answer.
Absolutely agree with your comment.
United we stand, divided we fall.
There are numerous countries that would like Canada to fall apart so that they could pick up the pieces.
With the war going on in the Middle East, I am always surprised by the number of geographically small countries. All these tiny countries rely on someone else to defend themselves. (Good reason for Canada to rebuild its military). The smaller they get, the less influence they have in their own destiny.
I lived in Quebec during both referendums. That was always my best reason, when talking to my French speaking neighbours, for staying united.
Yes, I was surprised to see no mention of active involvement by foreign bad actors.
Certainly Albertan's (past and present) deserve recognition for harnessing their natural resources, but let's not forget that having those natural resources to harness is an accident of geography.
And clearly there are other provinces who don't do as good a job of harnessing their own.
Personally, I think the whole concept of a federation of provinces (fiefdoms, more like) is an anachronism and counterproductive to the overall health of the nation. I'm a Canadian, not an Ontarian. Ontario just happens to be the place in Canada where I live. (Because it has the best weather ;) )
Best weather?? Clearly need to visit southern BC...
Your middle paragraph says it all. The culture of a lot of the eastern provinces seems to be that it’s more lucrative to chase entitlements paid for by the fruit of other’s labor than to actually develop your resources yourself. And this is encouraged by the central Laurentian elites and Quebec French who steal the entitlement funding from the producing provinces. And the pity parties called Federal elections are basically about who will pay what to whom (like the 19th century Indian potlatches banned by the Colonial masters) and how much will be paid by current voters and how much by children born and unborn through borrowing.
I’m told that the weather in the Okanagan valley is second to none in Canada. But yes southwestern Ontario can be nice. It sure as hell isn’t in Ottawa 😹
My last post on equalization (in case you missed it!):
https://substack.com/@marktilley458099/note/c-219598351
Yes I did thank you. Makes a lot more sense than the current system.
The ratchet type means testing developed by Ottawa bureaucrats used with income supplements are also a disincentive. Typically when you reach a certain threshold your benefits start to be reduced until they disappear. This discourages seeking employment and drives workers into the cash economy. When I think of the costs to administer means testing I always wonder if it isn’t better to get rid of the testing and just let the tax system recover part of the benefits from high income earners.
Actually, under a negative income tax basic income, high earners would never get benefits.
The transition from being on a single basic income (as a negative tax) to positive tax on your income would be the same line for everyone (except say, seniors and the disabled).
e.g. simple numbers example, which is actually close to the real numbers worked out using 2017 data:
basic personal amount 25K, single rate 40%. So at 0 income, basic income equals 10K. As income increases it gets "taxed" or more accurately, clawed back at 40% so that at 25K there is no basic income and no tax paid. All income in excess of 25K is taxed at 40%. The 40% is a weighted average of fed+prov rates and as I said in the other post, would be a lot higher in QC and the Maritimes.
Make sense. The US has some benefits along that line IIRC. The big issue is to get people who would benefit to file. I know the IRS (I suspect Revenue Canada also) does not release filers’s info to other agencies. Undocumented immigrants who would qualify are still afraid of the info going to immigration law enforcement. And people who employ(illegally) these people would also be reluctant to issue Income documents (T4s or W2s depending in country.
A change in attitude is fine, but does not make up for central Canadas' continual efforts to keep Alberta and the west from reaching our economic potential. Central Canada seems to have a constant need to interfere in business in the west, to avoid the reality of situations, and to work hard to keep us down.
I am a federalist and do not want to leave Canada. I actively cooperate with environmental efforts such as recycling, energy efficient everything and so on. But it's obvious that when Canada as a whole produces some 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gases, climate change was weaponized to aggressively harm the west. If central Canada wants unproven carbon sequestration, they can raise money to pay for it, and should not burden us, investors, or taxpayers with the expense, especially since as they continually point out, oil prices rise and fall. .
Canada generates 1.5 percent of the world's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with only 0.5 percent of the world's population. Roughly speaking, we therefore generate about three times as much per capita than "the average" person globally.
Furthermore, more than 80 percent of Canadians live in urban settings. 73 percent of Canadians, moreover, live in the biggest cities. This means that we do not, as a matter of course, commute daily or even weekly from far-flung places in the country to the places where we work in urban centres.
Our GHG emissions are, therefore, more about industrial policy than they are about transportation needs.
We can reduce emissions (nuclear power instead of natural gas for rendering oil sands into crude oil, for example).
Interesting but really you miss all the major important points that underlie the Alberta feelings and drive the separatist agenda. Of note the Alberta Separatist agenda is totally unlike the Quebec one; in Quebec its all about money. They already own a Constitutionally guaranteed disproportionate sway in Ottawa and Lib-math knows this which is why they concentrate on barely winning enough ridings in Quebec, the east, Ottawa and Toronto. That's all they need so why waste time or effort elsewhere. (If you doubt this look at their handling of firearms owners, they literally do not give a thin watery crap about them because they are not located where the Liberals need them so they can abuse those people to gain votes where they DO want them. Watch the final payout from the confiscation; essentially zero dollars will go to any owners outside of Quebec because the Libs think they MIGHT get some votes there so they will risk paying a gun owner in Quebec before they will give a used wooden nickel to one west of there.) Quebec knows they can select the Prime Minister and run all things financial so they win. And win and win and win. And Alberta sees this and has gotten zero respect, thanks, or support for anything they want to do out of Ottawa. Pipeline anyone? Hell no, we will use Albertas transfer "payments" to buy LNG from Australia before we put in a pipeline to use Albertas.
Alberta literally pays for the east. And they have ZERO say about it. I don't think the latest turn coat Jeneroux is going to suddenly make Albertan's feel all loved in Ottawa. The amount of money extracted is set by Ottawa and enforced from there. Albertans are expected to puke up whatever Ottawa demands and then shut up. And I say this as an Ontarian watching this very closely because rural Ontario is also abused EXACTLY the same way as Alberta. Non-Toronto/Ottawa Ontario probably has more in common with Alberta than any other part of the country when it comes to gross under representation and fiscal complete non-representation.
Until the Constitution is rewritten to actually recognize that PEI deserves ONE seat in Parliament not 4 (NB, NS, and Quebec are also massively over represented), that Senators should actually represent Canadians first and be elected to office not appointed to rubber stamp whatever the current largest party in Parliament shoves their way, and that property ownership means something we will continue to have this fight.
Right now about the only thing that may save this country IS Alberta voting to hand Danielle Smith the papers to potentially separate. The loss of their bank is the only thing that might get the Laurentians to the table because we all know they think they are better than us AND they think that we should be happy to just be tolerated in their presence. Trudeau said it "Quebecers are better" (look up the interview) and Mr. Brookfield reinforced it at the WEF more than once. Until enough Canadians - and this means we need way more than the Libs - get together and change the Government we will continue to be abused by Ottawa and the CBC will tell you you are lucky! If Carney gets a majority and we get 4+ more years of continuing Tru-topian destruction of our history and wealth this country will be done. Alberta WILL leave and so will anyone that is at all portable. All to the benefit of the US. What's left here will rot while serving the Mr. Brookfields of the world.
This article is thin gruel that refuses to list the real problems re. Alberta and ROC. Grade: D-.