Juno News - June 07, 2018


Canada’s equalization program makes no sense

Mentioned
Pauline Mauois
Al Gore has no credibility Illegal border crossers still getting a free ticket

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

131.78

Word count

583

Sentence count

42

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In Canada, so much of a province s wealth is tied to its willingness to extract and produce natural resources. And as a result, the whole country is getting handouts from the federal government. In this episode, Candice explains why this is a problem.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.880 Canada has a federal program that transfers money away from wealthier provinces and pays
00:00:06.640 it to the poorer provinces.
00:00:08.920 They call it equalization.
00:00:10.880 The idea is that all provinces across Canada should have similar resources in order to
00:00:15.680 deliver similar services like health care, education, social assistance, all the programs
00:00:21.360 that are administered by the provincial governments.
00:00:24.240 But in Canada, so much of a province's wealth is tied to its willingness to extract and
00:00:29.960 produce natural resources.
00:00:32.520 Let me explain.
00:00:33.840 The country is divided into two groups.
00:00:36.080 We have have provinces and have not provinces.
00:00:40.160 The haves contribute to the equalization fund, while the have nots receive the cash payments 0.93
00:00:46.200 from the fund.
00:00:48.240 But the number one indicator of status in this program is whether or not a province is willing
00:00:54.120 to develop its hydrocarbons.
00:00:56.960 Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and British Columbia are all have provinces.
00:01:02.360 They also make up about 98% of Canada's total oil production.
00:01:07.880 Both Newfoundland and Saskatchewan were long-time recipients, they were have not provinces.
00:01:13.440 That is, until they started developing their fossil fuel industry.
00:01:17.840 Now, let's take a look at these have not provinces.
00:01:21.240 First, Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province.
00:01:24.640 PEI will get $419 million in equalization payments this year.
00:01:29.640 PEI doesn't produce any fossil fuels, despite having pockets of natural gas deposits.
00:01:34.800 There has been no drilling whatsoever since 2007.
00:01:38.640 Next, Nova Scotia will receive $1.9 billion in cash transfers this year.
00:01:43.760 The province produces a tiny little bit of natural gas from its Sable Island offshore field,
00:01:50.280 which accounts for about 0.07% of Canada's total petroleum production.
00:01:55.760 But a January 2018 study found that the province's natural gas reserves could be worth up to $60
00:02:02.160 billion.
00:02:03.320 The problem is that Nova Scotia has a ban on hydraulic fracturing, the method needed to access
00:02:08.460 a deposit, and the local government has no plans to reverse this ban.
00:02:13.220 Next, New Brunswick, which will also receive $1.9 billion in federal cash transfers this year.
00:02:21.500 The known shale gas reserves in New Brunswick are estimated at 15 trillion cubic feet.
00:02:28.700 That's enough to last for 350 years at current demand levels.
00:02:33.700 And yet, much like its neighbour, the government of New Brunswick instituted a moratorium on
00:02:39.100 drilling.
00:02:40.780 Why create good-paying jobs for young Canadians in eastern Canada, when you can simply rely 1.00
00:02:45.880 on never-ending handouts?
00:02:47.940 Finally, Quebec, who will receive $11.7 billion in federal transfers this year.
00:02:54.660 Quebec is not currently an oil exporter, but based on the proven reserves in the Anticosti
00:02:59.900 Islands and the St. Lawrence River, it's estimated that Quebec could one day produce up to 300
00:03:05.780 billion barrels of oil.
00:03:07.780 Unfortunately, the Quebec government imposed a ban on drilling that has prevented any further
00:03:13.380 development.
00:03:14.380 In 2013, former Quebec Premier Pauline Mauois argued that if Quebec ever were to develop
00:03:20.960 its fossil fuels, well, that it shouldn't have to pay any future oil wealth to other Canadian
00:03:26.900 provinces.
00:03:27.900 Isn't that rich?
00:03:30.500 Anyone who pays attention to this program knows that it's completely broken.
00:03:35.620 The reality is that provinces who are willing to develop their natural resources, mainly
00:03:40.800 the fossil fuel industry, are paying the other provinces not to develop their natural resources.
00:03:47.640 And as a result, the whole country is poorer.
00:03:51.140 For the True North Initiative, I'm Candice Malcolm.
00:03:56.900 French hooked up.
00:04:02.680 The fact is this nation is no longer
00:04:13.260 than waste, but the Toilet &ngulo.
00:04:15.020 You can follow the heading down to the secretary of Quebec, who was going to qualify for the
00:04:19.000 top