Transfer and equalization payments are an essential part of any country with multiple jurisdictions that share a currency. If you want to break Canada, break transfer payments.
The last province to be bitching should be Saskatchewan. While Saskatchewan has not received equalization payments since 2015, since 1958, the federal government has paid something like $4.5 billion out. Far more than it has sent. And this includes the 80’s when the Conservatives bankrupted the province and their politicians ended up in prison.
Not defending the Federal government but when times were tough, money was sent. Repairs need to be done. Great post Doug
It’s not equalization payments that are to blame for the woes of the west. Just another spin on ‘don’t share your wealth’. A certain mindset will always find someone that they deem unworthy of their compassion. A functioning civil society has ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and tries to make fair rules about how wealth gets shared. Fairness depends on your perspective. I guess if oil prices tanked, and rare earth metals boomed, Ontario would be forced to fairly share the wealth.
if it’s everyone for themselves, society will collapse.
Just a small point about Alberta's education. Although you would think that the provincial government should be able to spend more on public education they have not. Alberta spends less per pupil than any other province in Canada ‼️The current govt has also made massive cuts in post-secondary academic institutions.
Okay. Now tell readers how Alberta students are doing in the national test comparisons. Are the biggest spenders per pupil getting the highest outcomes in competency tests?
You are quite right Darcy but the marks are going down on public school competency tests drastically if you remove the Charter Schools. They keep Alberta looking OK. When I worked for Alta Ed with reasonable funding and good curriculums many years ago we ranked 3rd in the world. We are also slowly losing our committed, skilled teachers because they too are burning out.
Where are all the billions of dollars from the fossil fuels going ? It isn’t going to wages (minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2018), infrastructure, healthcare and the heritage trust fund. It is the corrupt incompetent United Corrupt Party that is the problem.
You're right - there was an article about what the industry was doing with its "windfall" of record profits, and the answer is that it all went to pay shareholders - the owners - and to bondholders - to people who loaned the company money.
Those shareholders are, in many cases, U.S. parent companies.
That is a very small and deceptive part of the story. We are a country. Strong and sovereign. This American led propaganda comes from the corporations who are pillaging our resources.
Fantastic factual analysis of federal and provincial economics. It is a pity that the average voter defaults to responding to the base sentiments embedded in pithy political slogans. The truth of it is that greed fuels these political ponzie schemes. It is pitiful that the CPC is selling a tax break for the 1% as a coup for working Canadians. We are mired in ideology as your article points out. Anything that trickles out of Trickle Down economics trickles into offshore bank accounts, never to see the light of day in Canada. The profiteering on oil post COVID is an egregious attempt to foment and focus discontent on a liberal government that had committed to making oil pay reparations for their rapacious effect on the environment in the form of carbon pricing. It worked. The CPC was able to cull that anger into a populist uprising whose sole purpose was to let Big Oil have their cake and eat our lunch too. Criminal and pathetic!
Greed is very much part of our system. A functional market assumes greed and collective action problems, but works anyway. A big mistake would be to ignore the existence of greed or free riding in formulating your economic plans, because otherwise all it takes is one person to buck the norms and everything falls apart (and the incentive to do so is overwhelming -- free riding has a first-mover advantage). This is what's wrong with so much "progressive" economics: It imagines a perfect world and then tries to come up with a system that works in that world. When the proposed system hits reality it falls apart.
That is where macroeconomic planning and enforcement come in. You scaffold that presumed greed and self-interest with laws, regulations and consequences to get as close to that ideal as possible; however, the greediest of the greedy have spent an inordinate amount of time, creativity and money finding the holes in that scaffolding by utilizing armies of lawyers, NDAs, lobby groups, media misinformation, campaign financing and politicians to cut away at these structures in the name of efficiency and business. This erodes democratic norms and literally hands the keys of the kingdom over to “businessmen” whose infinite wisdom has brought us environmental collapse, unprecedented human suffering in the far-flung corners of their empires and even, in the case of one business man who has multiple bankruptcies on his CV, economic, political, civil and global chaos. So here we are. Time to fight to recapture those threadbare structures and re-imagine and rebuild them or, perhaps we are entering the new age of overt monarchy!
You're right about moneyed interests and your right that laws need to keep them in check, and if they find loopholes, we need a system that is motivated to close those loopholes for the public good. That's a hard problem. The thing is this: assuming greed and working to suppress it will probably not work. At root, what we're calling greed is built into life itself: always seeking to better its agency (from bacteria on up the phylogenetic tree). A good system doesn't just reign it in. A good system finds a functional place for it that uses it to propagate the system itself in a fair way, and to incentivize the right things. If the incentives are designed properly, you don't need a heavy hand to enforce - just targeted enforcement of the rare offenders.
While it is good and enlightening, never mind the long explanation. Let’s just say that the equalization formula Canada now uses was devised and adopted under a Stephen Harper Conservative government. With PP at the cabinet table if I remember well.
You are right, Mike. Stephen Harper did not invent equalization. It actually started in 1957 under Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. It has since been regularly updated to reflect the economy of Canada and the provinces. The latest iteration was adopted under the Stephen Harper government. The Trudeau government modified it slightly in 2018, but not enough for Alberta who keeps whining about it. Despite having the lowest taxation rate of any province and despite its high salaries (which is all part of the formula to assess equalization payments), Alberta thinks it should get equalization. In fact, another rich province, Ontario, did not receive equalization payments until a few years ago when its taxation rate changed and its economy tanked.
Genuine question: Does Alberta think it should get payments or just that it shouldn't have to pay as much? Or neither, and they just want to unleash their economy from beneath regulation? If the latter, it would help all of Canada.
Your comment is deceptive. Stephen Harper did not devise and adopt Equalization. He updated the formula as is the government in power’s duty to do as the country evolves. Who has been the government in power the last 10 years?
Funny I heard nothing from Alberta when they got equalization payments during COVID as oil tanked
Be careful what you wish for bc this year they will once again need equalization transfers bc oil prices are tanking and at a price of $60 oil companies will no longer drill bc they are loosing money
This whole thing. What makes Alberta’s oil Alberta’s Same with Sask and BC. And the water is Quebec’s and Ontario. When did this country become so greedy as to alienate the rest of the country
This is why HARPERS OLD GUARD. Including PP and Danielle must go. They won’t invest back into Canada their greed needs to be stopped now !!!
I believe in CANADA FOR CANADIANS. And when we have each others backs
First for everything, not sure the Federal $$$ are actually an Equalization Payment(?)
Toews’s office argued that 14.4 per cent of federal revenues were generated in Alberta, even with Alberta’s share of the population being 11.4 per cent.
“This means that Albertans still contributed disproportionately to the rest of the federation,” the statement said.
That’s an example of framing the situation in a way that is false.
It presents federal taxes being paid by high income Canadians as “belonging” to Alberta (or any other province) as a collective.
It creates the false impression that the money belongs to the government or the community. It doesn’t.
Toews argument - and that of western conservatives - is that the money somehow belongs to “everyone” and therefore that everyone would be richer, when we are talking about taxes being levied on a small group of people with very high incomes.
The myth of trickle down economics is that people with a lot of money are job creators, for this reason: people are always more willing to buy than to build. It’s easier and it’s more certain.
Well, if fed tax went to province instead, and province reduced taxes to suit, everyone would be richer in the province. It's just a question of which counterfactual you want to test against.
Second Trudeau invested in Alberta creating the new pipeline to BC ending Alberta’s land lock conundrum
The issues with AB always blaming the Feds for their healthcare and others when it’s all bc your Premiers refuse to take the federal money offered
$10/day daycare
Pharmacare among others
🇺🇸 lobbies continue to rile up AB against the Fed Gov, why? Bc this was they can continue to buy AB gas at 60 cents on the dollar instead of exporting around the 🌎 for full price. We have been subsidizing the 🇺🇸 for decades.
I suggest to read Ripped it explains everything the 🇺🇸 has done in order to rip off AB for decades!
If you keep electing conservatives, especially at a provincial level, nothing will change!
Best check your map, most the Oil and Gas and the $$$ generated isn’t on First Nations land. Perhaps Quebec will share the revenue created by the Hydroelectric Dams using Canadian water…?
Thank you so much for the explanation on this, now I understand what they're asking. It's simply against progressive (federal) taxation, a classic “I’ve got mine” conservative ploy for the rich to keep their money.
Equalization isn’t just a handout—it’s about keeping Canada strong. When BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan thrive, they help the whole country. And when other provinces need a boost, it’s in everyone’s interest to lend a hand.
A stronger Canada means more customers for Alberta’s oil, BC’s ports, and Saskatchewan’s resources. We all benefit when the whole country is healthy and working together.
Why is this so hard to understand? And why don't more people that complain about it know this?
What Scott Moe is hiding, is the fact his party scrapped the challenge against the funding model of equalization when his party took paper 15 years ago and there was a conservative federal government. This challenge was heading to the Supreme Court and HIS party canceled it. For right or wrong he (Brad Wall) had the opportunity to hash it all out in court but withdrew from the challenge because of a favourable federal government at the time. Scott Moe is in my mind a hypocrite and the biggest liar ever to run Sk.
Reminds me of the brexit referendum, when the leave campaign drove a bus around the country with an unfeasible sun written on it that we were supposedly going to reclaim from the EU to spend on healthcare. Of course, bullshit.
Many thanks, Dougald. No doubt, the ignorant, or people who have something to hide will call you a crank. But nothing creates understanding, or winds up the engines of economic prosperity like a good CRANK. Thank you for a better, more thorough understanding. 👍
The last province to be bitching should be Saskatchewan. While Saskatchewan has not received equalization payments since 2015, since 1958, the federal government has paid something like $4.5 billion out. Far more than it has sent. And this includes the 80’s when the Conservatives bankrupted the province and their politicians ended up in prison.
Not defending the Federal government but when times were tough, money was sent. Repairs need to be done. Great post Doug
It’s not equalization payments that are to blame for the woes of the west. Just another spin on ‘don’t share your wealth’. A certain mindset will always find someone that they deem unworthy of their compassion. A functioning civil society has ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and tries to make fair rules about how wealth gets shared. Fairness depends on your perspective. I guess if oil prices tanked, and rare earth metals boomed, Ontario would be forced to fairly share the wealth.
if it’s everyone for themselves, society will collapse.
Just a small point about Alberta's education. Although you would think that the provincial government should be able to spend more on public education they have not. Alberta spends less per pupil than any other province in Canada ‼️The current govt has also made massive cuts in post-secondary academic institutions.
Can we see the numbers that your basing your comment on?
https://teachers.ab.ca
I forgot to tell that Alberta and Saskatchewan have the lowest minimum wage in Canada as well ‼️
Okay. Now tell readers how Alberta students are doing in the national test comparisons. Are the biggest spenders per pupil getting the highest outcomes in competency tests?
You are quite right Darcy but the marks are going down on public school competency tests drastically if you remove the Charter Schools. They keep Alberta looking OK. When I worked for Alta Ed with reasonable funding and good curriculums many years ago we ranked 3rd in the world. We are also slowly losing our committed, skilled teachers because they too are burning out.
Where are all the billions of dollars from the fossil fuels going ? It isn’t going to wages (minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2018), infrastructure, healthcare and the heritage trust fund. It is the corrupt incompetent United Corrupt Party that is the problem.
You're right - there was an article about what the industry was doing with its "windfall" of record profits, and the answer is that it all went to pay shareholders - the owners - and to bondholders - to people who loaned the company money.
Those shareholders are, in many cases, U.S. parent companies.
what on earth are you talking about minimum wage went from $11 to $18 in bc in that time.
Alberta 15
That is a very small and deceptive part of the story. We are a country. Strong and sovereign. This American led propaganda comes from the corporations who are pillaging our resources.
Thanks for the article.
Its dense, taking a number of takes to get it all, and then a thorough re-read to ensure its all straight in my head. I don't mind the effort at all.
Fantastic factual analysis of federal and provincial economics. It is a pity that the average voter defaults to responding to the base sentiments embedded in pithy political slogans. The truth of it is that greed fuels these political ponzie schemes. It is pitiful that the CPC is selling a tax break for the 1% as a coup for working Canadians. We are mired in ideology as your article points out. Anything that trickles out of Trickle Down economics trickles into offshore bank accounts, never to see the light of day in Canada. The profiteering on oil post COVID is an egregious attempt to foment and focus discontent on a liberal government that had committed to making oil pay reparations for their rapacious effect on the environment in the form of carbon pricing. It worked. The CPC was able to cull that anger into a populist uprising whose sole purpose was to let Big Oil have their cake and eat our lunch too. Criminal and pathetic!
Greed is very much part of our system. A functional market assumes greed and collective action problems, but works anyway. A big mistake would be to ignore the existence of greed or free riding in formulating your economic plans, because otherwise all it takes is one person to buck the norms and everything falls apart (and the incentive to do so is overwhelming -- free riding has a first-mover advantage). This is what's wrong with so much "progressive" economics: It imagines a perfect world and then tries to come up with a system that works in that world. When the proposed system hits reality it falls apart.
That is where macroeconomic planning and enforcement come in. You scaffold that presumed greed and self-interest with laws, regulations and consequences to get as close to that ideal as possible; however, the greediest of the greedy have spent an inordinate amount of time, creativity and money finding the holes in that scaffolding by utilizing armies of lawyers, NDAs, lobby groups, media misinformation, campaign financing and politicians to cut away at these structures in the name of efficiency and business. This erodes democratic norms and literally hands the keys of the kingdom over to “businessmen” whose infinite wisdom has brought us environmental collapse, unprecedented human suffering in the far-flung corners of their empires and even, in the case of one business man who has multiple bankruptcies on his CV, economic, political, civil and global chaos. So here we are. Time to fight to recapture those threadbare structures and re-imagine and rebuild them or, perhaps we are entering the new age of overt monarchy!
You're right about moneyed interests and your right that laws need to keep them in check, and if they find loopholes, we need a system that is motivated to close those loopholes for the public good. That's a hard problem. The thing is this: assuming greed and working to suppress it will probably not work. At root, what we're calling greed is built into life itself: always seeking to better its agency (from bacteria on up the phylogenetic tree). A good system doesn't just reign it in. A good system finds a functional place for it that uses it to propagate the system itself in a fair way, and to incentivize the right things. If the incentives are designed properly, you don't need a heavy hand to enforce - just targeted enforcement of the rare offenders.
Um?… from BC here.. I have questions?..
🤯🇨🇦
While it is good and enlightening, never mind the long explanation. Let’s just say that the equalization formula Canada now uses was devised and adopted under a Stephen Harper Conservative government. With PP at the cabinet table if I remember well.
You are right, Mike. Stephen Harper did not invent equalization. It actually started in 1957 under Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. It has since been regularly updated to reflect the economy of Canada and the provinces. The latest iteration was adopted under the Stephen Harper government. The Trudeau government modified it slightly in 2018, but not enough for Alberta who keeps whining about it. Despite having the lowest taxation rate of any province and despite its high salaries (which is all part of the formula to assess equalization payments), Alberta thinks it should get equalization. In fact, another rich province, Ontario, did not receive equalization payments until a few years ago when its taxation rate changed and its economy tanked.
Genuine question: Does Alberta think it should get payments or just that it shouldn't have to pay as much? Or neither, and they just want to unleash their economy from beneath regulation? If the latter, it would help all of Canada.
Your comment is deceptive. Stephen Harper did not devise and adopt Equalization. He updated the formula as is the government in power’s duty to do as the country evolves. Who has been the government in power the last 10 years?
That is very good information to know … thank you for increasing my education
Funny I heard nothing from Alberta when they got equalization payments during COVID as oil tanked
Be careful what you wish for bc this year they will once again need equalization transfers bc oil prices are tanking and at a price of $60 oil companies will no longer drill bc they are loosing money
Equalization payments to Alberta during Covid, please share your source for the comment - Thanks
Here you go and it’s the National Post… so the most right leaning paper in Canada
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/for-the-first-time-in-more-than-50-years-alberta-received-more-money-from-ottawa-than-it-sent
I’m getting pissed if at
This whole thing. What makes Alberta’s oil Alberta’s Same with Sask and BC. And the water is Quebec’s and Ontario. When did this country become so greedy as to alienate the rest of the country
This is why HARPERS OLD GUARD. Including PP and Danielle must go. They won’t invest back into Canada their greed needs to be stopped now !!!
I believe in CANADA FOR CANADIANS. And when we have each others backs
We will THRIVE !!
First for everything, not sure the Federal $$$ are actually an Equalization Payment(?)
Toews’s office argued that 14.4 per cent of federal revenues were generated in Alberta, even with Alberta’s share of the population being 11.4 per cent.
“This means that Albertans still contributed disproportionately to the rest of the federation,” the statement said.
That’s an example of framing the situation in a way that is false.
It presents federal taxes being paid by high income Canadians as “belonging” to Alberta (or any other province) as a collective.
It creates the false impression that the money belongs to the government or the community. It doesn’t.
Toews argument - and that of western conservatives - is that the money somehow belongs to “everyone” and therefore that everyone would be richer, when we are talking about taxes being levied on a small group of people with very high incomes.
The myth of trickle down economics is that people with a lot of money are job creators, for this reason: people are always more willing to buy than to build. It’s easier and it’s more certain.
Well, if fed tax went to province instead, and province reduced taxes to suit, everyone would be richer in the province. It's just a question of which counterfactual you want to test against.
That’s exactly what they are.
Second Trudeau invested in Alberta creating the new pipeline to BC ending Alberta’s land lock conundrum
The issues with AB always blaming the Feds for their healthcare and others when it’s all bc your Premiers refuse to take the federal money offered
$10/day daycare
Pharmacare among others
🇺🇸 lobbies continue to rile up AB against the Fed Gov, why? Bc this was they can continue to buy AB gas at 60 cents on the dollar instead of exporting around the 🌎 for full price. We have been subsidizing the 🇺🇸 for decades.
I suggest to read Ripped it explains everything the 🇺🇸 has done in order to rip off AB for decades!
If you keep electing conservatives, especially at a provincial level, nothing will change!
As for AB generating that profit, oil and gas generated that profit not AB, that ressource is Canadian, most of it on First Nations lands.
As for calling the most right wing paper that blindly follows conservatives misleading, is rich.
Best check your map, most the Oil and Gas and the $$$ generated isn’t on First Nations land. Perhaps Quebec will share the revenue created by the Hydroelectric Dams using Canadian water…?
It's all First Nations land. Treaties cover all the land, not just the Reserves that people were forced to live on.
Most of Alberta is owned by First Nations
They likely own the property your place is on as well…
Probably not discounting it and if a Quebec referendum takes place in the future I’m delighted by it bc we automatically stay Canadian
Thank you so much for the explanation on this, now I understand what they're asking. It's simply against progressive (federal) taxation, a classic “I’ve got mine” conservative ploy for the rich to keep their money.
Great detailed and informative breakdown. Thank you.
Equalization isn’t just a handout—it’s about keeping Canada strong. When BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan thrive, they help the whole country. And when other provinces need a boost, it’s in everyone’s interest to lend a hand.
A stronger Canada means more customers for Alberta’s oil, BC’s ports, and Saskatchewan’s resources. We all benefit when the whole country is healthy and working together.
Why is this so hard to understand? And why don't more people that complain about it know this?
What Scott Moe is hiding, is the fact his party scrapped the challenge against the funding model of equalization when his party took paper 15 years ago and there was a conservative federal government. This challenge was heading to the Supreme Court and HIS party canceled it. For right or wrong he (Brad Wall) had the opportunity to hash it all out in court but withdrew from the challenge because of a favourable federal government at the time. Scott Moe is in my mind a hypocrite and the biggest liar ever to run Sk.
Reminds me of the brexit referendum, when the leave campaign drove a bus around the country with an unfeasible sun written on it that we were supposedly going to reclaim from the EU to spend on healthcare. Of course, bullshit.
Many thanks, Dougald. No doubt, the ignorant, or people who have something to hide will call you a crank. But nothing creates understanding, or winds up the engines of economic prosperity like a good CRANK. Thank you for a better, more thorough understanding. 👍
👍👍👍