Lorne Gunter answers Alan’s comment
Canadian Political Blogger #6! (and Good Egg) Alan McLeod comments,
Yes, it would be tragic if someone other than Ontario paid more than its fair share to maintain the Confederation.
Having friends in high places has propelled me to the #19 spot and so I was delighted to see that Lorne Gunter has responded to Alan over at the National Post:
The share of the green taxes he wishes to impose on Alberta and Saskatchewan would work out to nearly $1,500 per capita, or $6,000 per family. In the rest of the country, the load would be just $325 per person or $1,300 a family.And it’s not as though Albertans, in particular, aren’t making a disproportionate contribution to federal finances already.
In addition to fuelling the federal budget surplus, Albertans contribute about $4,000 more per person to federal finances than they receive back in federal program spending. By comparison, the fiscal deficit Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty frequently speaks of for his province is just over $1,500 per person per year, and Green Shift wouldn’t raise that to $2,000. national post
Trust me Alan, if Dion is elected and tries to pull this stunt the anger out here is going to make NEP I look timid. And this time there is a real capacity to go it alone.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I don’t particularly care about Dion’s plan but we have to ensure we are talking apples to apples. This 2005 Federal response document is useful: Ontario has contributed as much as 23 million more in a year and that was happily stated by Ottawa to be due to it being a wealthy province – as it still is – and not due to anything directly to do with “the family.” It has to do with productivity, business smarts, trade relations and a whole lot of other economic factors – many of which are external like those boosting the price of oil right now. Yet no other province quietly offers step up to take its place when relative wealth is shifted away from Ontario. When things shift, we quickly learn the Canadian Confederation is not a two-way street. It is only Ontario’s role is to be silent, under represented and over taxed – especially when someone pulls out that old separatists’ fiction of “the family” as the appropriate economic measurement.
I have no doubt soft separatist Albertans will cry foul. That is all I have ever heard from such politicians over the decades since I first started hearing the crank of the western cry. Is it Ontario’s fault that so few people live out there, inflating their own chosen statistical tool of convenience in relation to the production of wealth that is in large part independent of population? Does it really do to use families to compare a resource economy to one with more complex forms of production? It’s not like the families are sent to the fields to squeeze the oil from the share with their bare hands. Do you really think Saudis are the hardest working people in the world?
Again – apples to apples. Comparing through the measurement of population ignores that we are all Canadians. To me that means take your turn and pull when it’s your turn. Or is it that you think Albertans agree with Parizeau – that Canada is not a real nation? Not really a nation of equals? I find it more odd that Alberta separatist talk is so directly related to the price of oil, that their love of nation is as weak as that. No – not so much odd as just sad.
Again, I don’t particularly give a hoot over carbon tax. Seems a bit too much of the note tune to me. But so does the eternal bleat of the Albertan separatist.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I note that, apparently, M. Dion is running his numbers per capita which necessarily drives it down to the little ones.
The objection is that M. Dion’s Green Shaft is designed to target producers rather than consumers; the people who make or extract the oil rather than those who, well, burn it. Were M. Dion to target the users rather than the producers, I might have some sympathy but this is simply a tax grab.
That said, fast tracking a nuclear reactor to replace the natural gas used to extract the oil would make everybody happy….or would it?
Just as a thought experiment, imagine the clever Albertans managed to get the oil out without emitting a single tonne of CO2. Do you think Dion would be happy? Do you think the dim – but green – bulbs in the Libearl caucus would be happy? After all, where would all the lovely lolly go? The wretched Albertans would be Kyoto Good to Go and Ontarrrrioiaroo would still be pumping out carbon to beat the band.
“Clean” (and what a silly idea that is taxing an element) and rich. The Grits would pop a head gasket because all the loot would be accumulating in a province which is noted for not drinking the PC kool aid and not voting Grit. (Well, not all the loot; as Lorne points out, Alberta is pretty much keeping the feds in surplus by making the one thing the world wants: oil.)
(And to think you have the #6 position on this sort of analysis…Lucky you are a Good Egg otherwise I might suffer serious envy pangs. (Though I note that if I post my cut-rate .info URL on my comments your spambots delete me. Not quite apples to apples I say.))
July 14th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I’m pretty sure that I’d want to amputate Ontario from what I regard as Canada even if we didn’t have a drop of oil in the ground out here.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:59 am
1. The natural resources that are found within the boundaries of Alberta don’t belong exclusively to residents of Alberta, they belong to all Canadians.
2. The province of Alberta does not have the same capacity for separation from Confederation as the province of Quebec (or BC, NB, NF, NS, PEI & Manitoba) because it and Saskatchewan were created by the federal government on federal land and have no pre-existing quasi-independent colonial government system outside the Canadian federal framework.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Wouldn’t that be great. Ontario without the millstones and whiners! It would be mono-rails everywhere.
Jay, I think I need to clearly differentiate. I really don’t care what Dion thinks and suspect most, by the number in the polls, are with me. He has a lack of support that rivals even Harper! Fussing about what these non-historical figures presume is a bit of a waste, is it not?
July 15th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I agree with your assessment of M. Dion Alan, the problem is that if only because of the lack of support for Harper, there is some danger that this not very sophisticated man and his remarkably dumb political party may take office. Which means idiocy like the Green Shift could become law.
July 15th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Hans, they belong to Albertans but the rest of Canada benefits from them by way of tax revenue generated and Newfs employed.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:10 am
1. The natural resources that are found within the boundaries of Alberta don’t belong exclusively to residents of Alberta, they belong to all Canadians.
Try making the same argument about the gold found within the boundaries of Ontario, or the hydroelectric potential found within the boundaries of Quebec sometime
July 15th, 2008 at 10:12 am
“The province of Alberta does not have the same capacity for separation from Confederation as the province of Quebec”
I’m sure the Americans would be willing to accommodate our needs.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:51 am
1. The natural resources that are found within the boundaries of Alberta don’t belong exclusively to residents of Alberta, they belong to all Canadians.
This is absolutely, 100% incorrect.
Time for some history, Hans. Start with the Constitution Act. Your assertion is, frankly, insulting.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I thought I had posted this earlier but the oil patch was transferred in the 1930s as a free gift from Ottawa to the government of Alberta. I don’t see, however, how not knowing that is an insult. Division of powers debates seldom are.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:02 am
DCardno: No problem.
The Scold: Still not possible.
Just Me: Not trying to be insulting, just making an argument. Nothing is 100% incorrect, least of all comments about the Candian Federal system. No matter what the Constitution Act says right now, I think my first statement is a valid argumentative position especially if, say, a province or region was going to run around threatening to separate over sharing their good fortune.
Alan: I defer to you on that point as I now recall an earlier discussion we had where you had corrected me. Again, if it was gifted in 1930 and Alberta wanted to leave the federation, wouldn’t the federal government want to take the gift back? Moreover, if it was a gift frm the feds, it speaks to the idea that the oil is not something inherently belonging to Alberta, doesn’t it?
July 16th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Alan,
From whence was this ‘gift’ you speak of procured?
Was it the creation of the ATB because ontario refused to finance Alberta projects?
Was it the huge influx of investment from the United States?
Was it the creation of the most modern and efficient workforce and regulatory environment in the world?
Ontario’s delay in hitting a recession has been Alberta’s gift for the last 25 years. You’re welcome.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:41 am
“I thought I had posted this earlier but the oil patch was transferred in the 1930s as a free gift from Ottawa to the government of Alberta”
That has to be the most revisionist hubris dripping bunk I’ve read yet.
The early Oil patch wildcatters couldn’t buy an audience with Eastern Canadian capital investors. The province had to go elsewhere to get development capital so they had to have the resource management arrangement from the statute of Westminster repealed.
Gave Alberta a gift pfffft …you really have to stop boozing during the day….LOL
July 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
LOL!
What an abusive fool you are, hand puppet
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/committee/391/rnnr/reports/rp2614277/rnnrrp04/08_Chap_3_ENG.htm
July 16th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Nothing gets Canadians’ blood up faster than a good old federal provincial argument.
Not that the origin of Alberta’s resource ownership actually matters as that ownership is now a constitutional fact and not subject to revocation.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Sure – but one knows what the name for the ungrateful giftee is, right?
July 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am
...and, by the way, it’s not a constitutional fact at all. I would expect, without amending or engaging the constitution, that Alberta could sell off its interest in bit of the oil patch just as it could any other socialized interests owned by said People’s Republic.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am
You can see from Alan’s paternalistic and absolutely moronic opinions why so many Albertan’s do consider seperation an option.
Alan, you correctly refer to the Government of Canada passing legal ownership of Mineral Rights to the Province of Alberta. It is also well documented that Brownlee was ready to break the entire confederation because of the attitudes so eagerly displayed by uptight imperialists such as yourself. In fact, it is quite well document how concerned King was with that threat, and it is evidenced in the different deals garnered by Alberta and Manitoba. The mineral rights were always Alberta’s, and the people knew it.
But you stated “the oil patch was transferred in the 1930s”, not just mineral rights. Where is your evidence of such?
July 16th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I’m talking with Jay, Duffus.
Jay, can you deal with this rabble? We imperialists have standards.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Hasn’t Alberta been a net contributor to Canada since, well, nearly forever? Haven’t we given and given and given?
Now that ON hovers on the brink of being a “have not”, they all of a sudden believe that Alberta needs to give more and more and more?
No thanks. This is a tax grab aimed at Alberta, and designed to transfer wealth to central Canada. Don’t believe me? Ask the Liberals themselves – they’ll admit it (at least the honest ones will).
July 17th, 2008 at 8:21 am
You mean you said to Jay: “What an abusive fool you are, hand puppet”? Not a very nice way to speak to your host, if I may say so myself.
Nothing like pointing out the truth to enrage an imperial propaghandist.
Hows the recession coming down east?
July 17th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
The chide of the hand puppet; the dry leaf that falls in the middle of the forest.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:49 am
The chide of the aging imperialist, one last cry to steal the riches of the hinterland.
Not on my watch. Get a job, they’re still hiring in Ft. Mac.