35 Replies to “Go, Already”

  1. What a sweet gig they’ve got. You have to admire the gall to take so much for so little and then make so much noise at the Federal level.

  2. It is more than mere noise at the Federal level.
    They provide nearly all our PM’s, they own the “bi-lingual” buracracy, and Cubec’s progressive Carbon tax agenda is Canada’s idiotic progressive Carbon tax agenda.

  3. One province with 10% of the population has funded the whole mess. Good thing for Quebec is that Alberta is populated with extremely stupid people, myself excluded, who couldn’t care less. The rest of the world would have revolution, Alberta not so much.

  5. It’s similar to the classic welfare dilemma: if you increase your earnings, you lose out on some dole. QC could easily increase its provincial income if they fracked but why do something messy when you can just get it for free.

  6. And the revenues of Quebec hydro are not properly factored as they sell power to citizens and companies at far below market rates. Had that been done Quebec would have been a have province at least since the early eighties.

  8. If Kevin O’Leary (or Max Bernier or Andrew Scheer or Kellie Leitch) made ending equalization payments a ‘top 3’ plank in their platform they’d win in a populist, Trump-like landslide, while at the same time Canada’s MSM chattering gasbags would suffer an epidemic of ‘exploding head syndrome’.
    Come on Conservative leadership candidates …MAKE THIS A TOP PRIORITY ISSUE! If O’Leary made this his issue he’d never again be expected to speak a word of French; he could just say “I represent ALL Canadians, including those in Quebec who may hate me for my lack of French” ….DOOOOO IT!!!

  9. That’s a neat graph they got there, especially the most recent Conservative government’s reign…..
    Or… they could have simply shown a graphic of Harper sucking Quebec’s c*ck.

  11. If I was President of the Republic of Canada, my first executive actions would be to,
    1. Eliminate transfer payments between the Provinces
    2. Outlaw the Crown and all instances of Royalty
    3. Outlaw trade unions
    4. Destroy any treaties with the Indians. Allow a 5 year plan for natives to buy back their Reserves and then after that …the open market
    5. Eliminate French as an official language
    6. Close the borders to all non-white and non-Christian immigration. Loosen immigration for Whites and Europeans.
    7. Shrink the Canadian Government by 80%
    8. Give land owners unassailable mineral rights.
    9. Adopt a Constitution that replicates the US Constitution
    10. Make all government executive positions open seats that appear on the ballot for direct election by the people.

  12. If you had the power to implement those outlined points you would not be a President of a Republic you would have to be a President of a Dictatorship.

  13. I have read that the rest of Canada provides Quebec with something close to 25% of it’s provincial revenue/budget – – can anyone confirm that?

  14. I agree with EVERYTHING except Number 3.
    I have no issue with the Boilermakers, Pipefitters-Plumbers, Scaffolders or even the Labourers….they Earn their keep. Actual Trade Unions…now if you’re talking about CAW, Postal Workers etc…have at er.
    The REAL enemy are PUBLIC SERVICE Unions..
    The root of All Progressive Leftist Marxist Evil in the Western World.

  15. Another way to do it. Apply a basic income tax for provincial purposes of 10 % personal and large business and 5 % small business. Then allocate these funds to the provinces on a per capita basis. If the provinces choose to have an additional provincial income tax, all the more power to them. Just don’t come whining for more cash. I just took the politics out of the system so it will never fly. It doesn’t give the frogs preference.

  16. We all know the only reason Obama saved GM was to save the union, which caused the problem in the first place.

  17. Hi SDA, Kate, John Galt,
    Excellent chart. A further illuminating development of the data would be to add a line representing net cumulative total dollars sent to the Socialist Republic of New France, over the entire period of transfers.
    Yours in Christ,
    Niall from Winnipeg

  18. “If I was President of the Republic of Canada…”
    Then I’m happy on two counts:
    1. You are not a president.
    2. We are not a republic.

  19. It’s also akin to the income tax system, where certain benefits are lost as one’s income rises. A case in point is the new Canada child benefit so touted by the Liberals. Certainly, benefits have increased, but the threshold at which they decrease is about $60,000 net family income, and the effect of this decrease is to decrease the overall family income even as the family is actually earning more. It’s going to be a nasty shock to families in the $60,000 – about $80,000 net income range. The decrease is such that it overcomes the tax “break” resulting from the decrease in the second tax bracket by .05%.

  20. One more time: provinces don’t pay a cent towards equalization; individual taxpayers and corporations do. Taxpayers resident in the Province of Québec pay the same Federal taxes as Albertans.
    The real debate is whether it is appropriate – or fiscally responsible – for Federal revenues to be disbursed like this to two large, wealthy provinces like Québec and Ontario.

  21. It has always amazed me how productive Canadians are quite willing to sit back and do nothing while the governments they elect are given unlimited power to disperse tax money to the unproductive. I’m not talking about those that are unable to work but rather those that either choose not to or those that pretend to work in order to get the government largesse. We allow our governments to disperse money to the CBC, Aboriginal Affairs, Provincial Equalization, Foreign Aid, and a plethora of other venues. The latest donation of $650 million to international women’s health is another example of how the Liberal government is disconnected from the people that elected them. Liberal governments seem to be the worst offenders for when a Conservative government tries to cut back they are castigated for their frugality. In the Liberals drive to bring ‘social justice’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘equality’, and the legion of other ideals to the rest of the world they seem to have forgotten that the Canadian ‘bucket’ they are drawing their largesse from is only so deep. If Canadians are too dumb to draw rein on these spendthrifts then we truly deserve the hurt that is approaching. It is unfortunate that the ‘sins of the father will surely be visited upon the son’. We didn’t recognize this with Pierre and thus we have Justin repeating history.

  22. “One more time: provinces don’t pay a cent towards equalization”
    Provinces certainly do. The people in Alberta did. The government of Alberta did not.

  23. Is there anyway we could see all the provinces equalization payments to see whom gives the least and whom gets the least! The Atlantic provinces would prove interesting. Or is there a site we can go to anyone!!!!

  24. “Is there anyway we could see all the provinces equalization payments to see whom gives the least and whom gets the least!”
    No, because provinces don’t give any money to the equalization programme, federal taxpayers in those provinces do (“the Government of Canada collects these taxes and other sources of revenue in the provinces, not from the provinces. This is a very subtle, but crucial difference”).
    All you can really do is contrast the amount of federal revenue brought in by province with the equalization payments. So, for example, in 2009 the Federal Government collected just under $40 billion in revenues within Québec and paid $8 billion in equalization payments to the Government of Québec. That same year, the Federal Government raised $36 billion in revenues within Alberta but made no equalization payment to the Government of Alberta.
    No province gets an equalization payment higher than the federal revenues collected in that province (i.e., Québec is not getting more back than its federal tax base contributes) For what I would consider the most “have-not” province in 2009 – New Brunswick – federal revenues collected were about $3.7 billion and the Government of New Brunswick received an equalization payment of just over $1.5 billion.
    (I would be very interested to know what the figure of “Paid in $2.671.4 M” in that dodgy Toronto Sun chart up there is supposed to represent, since the taxpayers in Québec paid nearly $32 billion more into Federal revenues than the provincial government received in equalization.
    Adding to the general dubious quality of the Toronto Sun piece is this quote: “Created nearly 150 years ago, at the beginning of the confederation…”
    Wrong. While the Dominion/Federal Government had been transferring monies to provinces on and off basis since Confederation according to need, the formal Federal equalization programme only started in 1957.)

  25. “Is there anyway we could see all the provinces equalization payments to see whom gives the least and whom gets the least!”
    Sure no problem. We have the total amount of equalization payments. Then we work it back to source to see which province pays what amount of equalization based on what proportion of total federal taxes it pays. Then we can compare what each province pays to what each province receives. I wouldn’t doubt that someone has already done the math.

  26. No Mike. That would be Nova Scotia.
    Quebec GDP is about $390 billion, a little more than Alberta and about half that of Ontario. It represents almost 20% of Canada’s GDP. Transfer payments, at $10 billion, represent less than 3% of Quebec’s GDP.
    Quebec provincial revenue is just over $90 billion, making transfer payments about 11% of provincial revenue.
    Interestingly, 70% of the transfer payments to Quebec just cover interest payments on their debt.

  27. Nova Scotia. Government revenue $11 B, $3 B transfers or 27% of revenue is in the form of transfer payment.
    New Brunswick. $8 B revenue, $2.7 B transfers or 34% revenue coming from transfer payments.
    PEI. $2 B revenue, $0.5 B transfers or 25%.
    If you add up the transfers to the Atlantic provinces the amount is close to that of Quebec but provincial revenues when totalled don’t even come close.

  28. Alberta should change its name.
    Alsucka is far better since until recently they have been the prime supplier of excess funds to enable Quebecois to live the good life.
    And worse: we pay them and their thanks is the little Fop prime minister with the IQ of a bath plug.

  29. The problem is folks who pay little or no income tax get the same vote as those who pay much more. Eliminate those folks from the polls and see a different result.

  30. Ending equalisation could be a winner, even in Quebec. After all, many Quebecois firmly believe that their province pays in far more than it receives, that THEY are the ones subsidizing the rest of Canada.

  31. you might think so, but Ontario and the rest of the far east are tactical voters. They all know a cash cow when the see one and have little sympathy for the west. They just want their “share” of the gravy. Don’t go kicking at Quebec too hard or here comes just about everyone on the dole to call you a racist or worse.

  32. I’ve been saying that for years. Proportional representation as an alternative to FPTP will only work if your vote is proportional to the amount of effort you put into society. In other words if you are a contributing taxpaying responsible citizen then your vote is worth a magnitude more than a public service employee, an Indigenous Native living on reserve, a felon serving time in prison, or an absent Canadian that does not live in the country at least 9 months of the year. These would just be a start in willowing out the freeloaders.

  33. “No, because provinces don’t give any money to the equalization programme”
    Your being specious I think, the “Province” or the people in it, same thing. No one said “Provincial Government”.
    By any reasonable standard Quebec is a have province and has been for decades. They are taking more relatively speaking than they give, especially when held up to the lens of Western contributions.

  34. the tail has been wagging the dog for a long time now. if Quebec were to separate they would be a Venezuela in a very short time period. a lot of time shares would open up in Florida.

  35. Equalization payments must be cancelled and a new system developed!
    Denis Coderre blocking oil from the West made this a wedge issue! Equalization payments were established to create a balanced dominion. The Have provinces are being put at a disadvantage! The program is badly broken!

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