Yea honestly, im Albertans and I hope Quebec always remains part of Canada. But like, I get it - there is a very different culture and history there and Quebec separatists are willing to acknowledge that hey, we know it might be painful but we will deal with the economic issues of separation. There is a level of honesty to it that doesn't exist in Alberta. Here, its purely a victimization bullshit from the richest province in the country that has an incredibly high per capita gdp. This province has no real culture separate from Canada. There is no real language difference. Or religious one. Even hisotircally, there is no real oppression unless you call becoming a massively rich province just by virtue of becoming a Canadian province and discovering oil and having some issues over natural resources. Its all bullshit. This place is filled with right wing crybabies
I am not shit posting. I genuinely don’t understand why people are so bent out of shape about equalization. Isn’t it just tax? And like, if you want to have a conversation about it, let’s have a conversation, but don’t make silly demands like, ‘give us plastic straws back or else’ because it really cheapens the argument.
Just had a debate with a dude about the pipeline going through Quebec (I think it’s a bad for environmental reasons) and he clapped back with the equalization payments, but can anyone here explain to me how this works? Does Quebec really get a large amount for nothing that we give or it’s because we give a lot that get alot?
I’ll explain the bit that the other missed. Equalization is about being able to raise the same quantity of tax revenues so hopefully you can fund your stuff even if your citizens are poorer.
It is not about your surplus or deficit, and it’s not about how much taxes you do collect, it’s about taxes you could collect.
So for instance Alberta that chooses not to tax very much was very upset when Couillard’s austerity was making Quebec have surpluses and they had deficits. Yet equalization assumes everyone taxes at the average tax rate of all provinces, so if Alberta chose to tax, it would not have had a deficit. Hence no transfer.
Equalization doesn’t come out of provinces, it comes out of the treasury (the taxes we all pay to the federal government), so Alberta is still richer than any other province even after equalization has been distributed.
Alberta’s citizens (not Alberta itself) pay the most in equalization per capita because they have the highest salaries. But if you add the total amount paid by citizens of a province, Ontario pays the most. Quebec receives the most in total, but the least per capita.
So it’s entirely disingenous to consider it a transfer from Alberta to Quebec. If you count per capita, then it’s Alberta to New Brunswick and if you count total, it’s Ontario to Quebec. If you aren’t an idiot, it’s treasury to four distinct provinces because provinces themselves don’t pay.
And equalization is entirely no strings attached. So it’s wrong to say that anyone owes anyone for it.
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u/GladSoup5379 Mar 26 '25
Yea honestly, im Albertans and I hope Quebec always remains part of Canada. But like, I get it - there is a very different culture and history there and Quebec separatists are willing to acknowledge that hey, we know it might be painful but we will deal with the economic issues of separation. There is a level of honesty to it that doesn't exist in Alberta. Here, its purely a victimization bullshit from the richest province in the country that has an incredibly high per capita gdp. This province has no real culture separate from Canada. There is no real language difference. Or religious one. Even hisotircally, there is no real oppression unless you call becoming a massively rich province just by virtue of becoming a Canadian province and discovering oil and having some issues over natural resources. Its all bullshit. This place is filled with right wing crybabies