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LBJ's war on poverty accomplished nothing but to guarantee a permanent underclass. Equalization has harmed both rich and poor provinces. Poor provinces are encouraged to live beyond their means and rich ones have lowers growth rates. Equalization is a lose lose proposition Quebec and other so-called “have not” provinces have traditionally defended the level of equalization payments on the basis of their economic situation. Yet, as shown above, there is no significant gap in real per capita income between slow-growth provinces and other regions. The level of equalization payments to each province should therefore be similar, most likely zero. Equalization simply makes explicit the transfer of the burden of lagging provinces to other regions of Canada. Absent equalization, higher...

As I have said before, I think the time for equalization is long over. Ted Morton, Alberta's Minister of Finance agrees.Alberta's answer to emissions problem: Stop flying equalization money to Ontario and QuebecWay to go Ontario. Way to go Quebec.Bigmouth officials from the two provinces thought they were pretty smart when they jetted off to Copenhagen and started blaming Alberta for the country's record on greenhouse gas emissions....

The national Post is right. It is time to kill the equaliziation program. Today Ontario starts getting equalization money. Equalization serves little purpose now and is basically a waste of $14 billion. Time to use this money for across the board income tax cuts.While we might not agree with all-- or even most of-- Mr. Obama's policies, we admire the U. S. President's instinct for seizing the moment to bring about radical changes that might not otherwise see daylight. Stephen Harper's government should do likewise here in Canada, seizing this opportunity to eliminate our outdated equalization...

Equalization has become somewhat bizarre, The National Post thinks we should get rid of it. Kill equalizationNational Post Published: Saturday, November 08, 2008Equalization has never made sense, at least not on the mammoth scale on which it is practised in Canada. At one point, more than 40% of the budgets of Atlantic provinces came from Ottawa in the form of transfers and equalization. No other Western nation redistributes so much wealth.Equalization is also like fly paper -- very hard to escape. Since the very early days when Alberta left the have-not rolls, only Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have graduated from their ranks, and both of them only in the last year.This reliance on handouts makes governments and voters too dependent on other people's money and less willing to make...

Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, carries a grudge against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and has launched an infantile Anything But Conservative campaign (note that Williams himself is a Conservative). In returning to an infantile age, Williams is distorting the facts and lying to the Canadian public. Harper didn't break any promise to Williams; he provided him with two options: the original promise and an alternative. Apparently, the insult for Williams was that he was given two choices (some people have a hard time choosing between A and B), instead of just one. This silly and downright moronic...

The Atlantic provinces are ganging up on Harper, as is the West, such as Saskatchewan's premier Lorne Calvert. It all comes down to the old story of equalization and what each province gets or doesn't get. The Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald is particularly furious over a letter finance minister Jim Flaherty published in a Nova Scotian newspaper:Mr. MacDonald believes Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government has shut the door to further talks. The last straw, he said, was Mr. Flaherty's open letter to Nova Scotians, published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald on Saturday, saying the federal government "is not in the process of making any side deals [with provinces] for a few extra votes. You cannot run a country on side deals."Right there is a big, fat lie. Flaherty...

The Globe and Mail fully agrees with my take on Jean Charest's misuse of Canadian (i.e., Albertan) tax dollars:Ontario does not receive equalization, although its taxpayers provide more than 40 per cent of the program's funds. It could not afford income-tax cuts this year. Quebec has avoided the tough fiscal choices other provinces have been forced to make. It has maintained artificially low fees for child care and postsecondary tuition, and now it is effectively forcing taxpayers in other provinces to pay for its tax cuts. Mr. Charest has mocked those taxpayers with his previous pleas of poverty.Québec, as it is now and has been, is a farce. Time to change things......

From the Globe and Mail:Premier Jean Charest will proceed with his controversial tax cut that cost the Quebec Liberals dearly in the last election. In a bold move, Mr. Charest may even defy the opposition to defeat the minority government on his tax measure, which is opposed by both the Action Démocratique du Québec and the Parti Québécois.The income-tax cut will highlight the budget to be tabled today, with Mr. Charest arguing that the Liberal Party is the only one standing up for middle-class Quebeckers. "As of tomorrow the real question will be: 'Who speaks for the middle class? Who defends the middle class in Quebec? Who will defend the tax cuts?' The Quebec Liberal Party will do it," Mr. Charest shot back as the PQ demanded that the money received from Ottawa in the last...

Stephen Harper's conflict with Alberta over the federal equalisation programme is a tidy example of the political one-night stand. Having been seduced on the campaign trail by the apparently unanimous provincial calls to "fix the fiscal imbalance", Harper has woken post-election to find that the premiers can hardly be expected to respect him after he has succumbed to their...

By Guest-Blogger Max Mitchell It appears the ol' Tories here in Alberta will be managing yet another hefty surplus this year. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/02/26/alberta-money.html Hmm, but wait.  Shouldn't that surplus be about  14 billion, or more?  I'm pretty sure those thieving overlords over at Encana reported a similar profit just a couple weeks back and, in keeping with the mystical cartoon ideals of what I like to call the "collective sunshine universe", Albertans (actually, Alberta's government) should rightfully be entitled to all of that, should they not...?  Profit's a bad thing, remember?  Profit, apparently, is something always gained at the expense of greater society at large.  I mean sure, the oil industry is...

I can hear the drums. The tribes are getting ready to go on the war path ... and with good......

Looking at what Harper is about to do with respect to Canada's system of equalization payments, one cannot help but think that he must have a death wish. Perhaps, he wants to be booted out of 24 Sussex Drive as soon as possible. Québec is to receive at least $1 billion more in equalization payments, a move that is bound to upset everyone in Western Canada, where approval for Harper's motion to recognize Québec as a nation was the lowest. Saskatchewan is upset too, because under Harper's new plan, the province will not get anything. All this is due to Harper being en route to breaking yet another promise: I will not include a province's natural resources in the calculations. Now, however, it looks as if he's prepared to include 50% of natural resources to set the amount of...

It's sort of a declaration of war: Alberta is "the bad boy" of Confederation and will fight for its own rights as a nation, including a provincial immigration program and equitable treatment in Canada, the province's Intergovernmental Relations Minister Guy Boutilier said Friday. His comments come as a leading expert on the so-called fiscal imbalance says Ottawa will likely release a framework to solve the federal/provincial funding feud by as early as February in the federal budget. Boutilier's remarks also follow Alberta's new Premier Ed Stelmach's assertions in December that Alberta is its own distinct entity and will battle for the same rights as a Quebec nation. They also indicate the Alberta government will stir things up on the national scene over the inter-provincial struggle...

David Wilkins, the US ambassador to Canada, says the US still considers Maher Arar a threat, but won't share US intelligence with Canada. According to the US government, Arar will continue to be kept on the watch list based on evidence not obtained from Canadian sources. Why won't the US share the information and evidence it has? If they know something we don't, and it's valid and substantiated evidence, it might even help our government's case in the $37 million lawsuit. But as long as the Americans keep silent, we have to assume that they're wrong and that we're right. ______ We're still without an agreement on equalization. Quelle surprise! I'll say it now and go on record as stating that we will never reach such an agreement. Unless we achieve a semblance of the cohesion...

I have to say that I like what new Alberta premier Ed Stelmach has said about Québec: any special treatment, benefit or favours that Québec receives must also go to Alberta. It's really quite simple: either all provinces are 100% equal, or this country is screwed. Gerard Kennedy was also the only Liberal leadership candidate with the guts to say what was right, rather than simply repeating something that was considered popular or designed to get votes. And so he was the sole voice speaking up against recognizing Québec as a nation. The others simply flailed in the blowing winds coming out of Michael Ignatieff's lungs and those of the separatists. Equality is something that a lot of politicians talk about, but when it really comes down to it, they all pull in their tails and go the...

"Alberta paranoid about its wealth" - that's the title of a column in the Toronto Star. The trigger for this column was an article that Preston Manning had written for the Globe & Mail about Alberta and the issue of redistributing its wealth. It seems that some people, including those one would expect to know about these things, are still completely clueless when it comes to the federal government's equalization program. Including Alberta's oil wealth in the equalization formula would not mean taking more money out of Alberta, as opponents of this idea keep misinforming everyone; instead, it would simply change the amounts paid out by Ottawa to have-not provinces. In other words, to a province like Alberta, it would not change anything. When the Toronto Star columnist contacted Manning...