By Rick Bell,
It’s a question a lot of folks ask these days.It’s a question some ask when they hurt or their friends hurt or the couple down the street hurt.
It’s a question an oilpatch worker asked Prime Minister Trudeau when he had the chance.
If now is not the time to keep our money in Alberta, the considerable coin usually shipped to other provinces, when would be the time?
According to the current rules, it’s a time quite a bit closer to the apocalypse.
The opposition Wildrose want to tackle the unfairness of equalization.
They set up a panel headed up by Calgary economist Frank Adkins to look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the program.
You see, we pay taxes to Ottawa. The feds have an equalization pot. Have-not provinces get dollars. Have provinces, such as Alberta, do not.
The plan is to have money spread around so we’re one big, happy and somewhat equal family.
Albertans put in $2-billion-plus a year and get the square root of squat. The amount Alberta has scooped since 1963. The big goose egg. Not even after the National Energy Program. Not in the early days of Ralph and the big cuts.
Quebec scores more than $9 billion a year.
The big brains on the Wildrose-appointed group will report back in the fall on their look-see into equalization.
The Notley NDP will get a copy of the report so they will have some ammo to fight for us.
WARNING TO READERS: Do not hold your breath on that.
Unlike the Saskatchewan government under Premier Brad Wall, the Notley NDP show no stomach for the struggle.
“Why do politicians elected by the people of Alberta ignore the conversations Albertans want? Albertans want this conversation,” says Wildrose leader Brian Jean.
NDP budget boss Joe Ceci says nothing to this scribbler on Thursday but his comments elsewhere are in line with what he said to me a short while ago.
“It’s a long-term throw in terms of trying to influence a change in all that,” said Ceci.
“You need to bring all of the other provinces to the table and everyone’s pretty much got to agree to switch all of that around.”
Ceci said he’s focused on getting cash for construction, access for pipelines and a better deal for those collecting EI.
Oh, and the province got $250 million from Ottawa, a spit in the bucket to try and keep us calm.
That’s the way it is.
Remember when federal budget boss Bill Morneau came to Calgary and got a rough ride from university students over equalization and how nothing was coming our way.
“It would be something we’d want to do with a great deal of caution because we want to make sure any outcome is something we’re comfortable with, It’s not something we’re talking about right now,” says Morneau, on equalization.
Then there was the answer to the oilpatch worker delivered by Morneau’s boss, the prime minister.
“Ontario and Quebec still pay far more into equalization than Alberta just because of population.”
They pay more because they have more people. And Ontario collects some and Quebec collects a lot and Alberta is empty-handed
Let’s talk of, let’s say, Nova Scotia. Economist Atkins points out that province banned fracking.
An easy move for them since if they’d actually developed their oil and gas it would have affected their equalization payment.
Atkins says they are “hypocritical.”
After all, they take the have-not handout that’s partly funded by oil and gas and cling to their supposed virtue.
“This is terrible,” says Adkins. “Something about this is very, very wrong.”
A new deal will be inked in three years.
While the NDP is asleep at the wheel, the official opposition leader charges ahead.
“We believe Albertans expect action from their politicians during this period of uncertainty and economic turmoil,” says Jean.
“I’m not going to shirk from a battle.”