00:10:09.520So I think there's a case to be made for drastically reducing the payments in this program
00:10:15.440and still absolutely maintaining every expectation anyone ever had of it.
00:10:19.780You're probably not an expert in the finances of every province, but interesting that those two stand out. I can understand why PEI would stand out. It's pretty difficult as a small jurisdiction. I think population 100,000 or thereabout. It'd be pretty difficult to provide all of the services that a province provides without needing some support. So I'll give them a little bit of a pass. But why is New Brunswick? Why are they such an outlier? What's going on?
00:10:45.300i i i know i mean halifax is a major economic hub with a major port and ship building and
00:10:52.660uh there's actually more federal spending that goes on in nova scotia to support those
00:10:57.140industries so could be a bit of a combination of legitimate economic uh opportunity and and
00:11:03.460government funded uh opportunity um but yeah and their neighbors but um for whatever reason
00:11:11.140new brunswick is notably lower whereas um it's not so clear how much nova scotia really needs
00:11:18.260from this program so then let's talk about the other ones so you say manitoba and quebec i mean
00:11:23.700the thing that sticks out is the commonality with both of those is they've both got hydro resources
00:11:28.980and so we're not even though we're penalizing those provinces that have natural resources i
00:11:34.980mean isn't being able to have robust hydro electric power isn't that also a natural resource
00:11:40.740and maybe you can explain a little about why that is treated so differently under the equalization
00:11:45.860formula. Sure. A lot of people think that Quebec's hydro isn't counted. It's not that it isn't
00:11:51.600counted. It's that Quebec hydro purposely does not try to generate profit. It's there to provide
00:11:59.940low-cost electricity to Quebecers is kind of its mandate. And so it subsidizes rates considerably.
00:12:08.000Whereas Alberta, of course, has a private generation system where definitely they want
00:12:13.900to see some profits, and that's expected.
00:12:16.600And it's a mix in different provinces.
00:12:18.780But in Quebec, they subsidize their rates considerably so that there are no profits
00:19:05.240But Quebec disappears and Ontario collects about four more.
00:19:08.540And then a couple of the maritime provinces drop a little bit.
00:19:11.380But I would argue legitimately for the reasons we've outlined,
00:19:13.860which is they don't need to pay people as much as you do in Ontario
00:19:17.760own Alberta. And, you know, public servant costs are at least half of what, what you spend on
00:19:24.220social services. Okay, well, you have explained two very simple changes, I think that could be
00:19:29.860made to a very complex formula. But what you've proposed makes good sense to me. So let's talk
00:19:34.240then about why this grows with increasing in gross domestic product, because that when you on the
00:19:40.380surface of it, you would, you could imagine the politicians thinking that as things become more
00:19:47.880expensive in the have provinces is going to put even more pressure for us to keep up with that
00:19:53.500in the have not provinces. But you're quite right that we've got to be looking at this differential.
00:19:59.160And if the differential is narrowing, then the amount that we pay in support should also be
00:20:03.680narrowing. That also seems to make sense. Why wouldn't that be factored into the formula?
00:20:07.900in 2009 ontario 40 of the country was suddenly dropping into into the equalization pool and the
00:20:17.740displacement from that was a little frightening i think so the government at the time uh which
00:20:23.660was not a liberal government and again this is bigger than than just a party problem um
00:20:29.740responsibly put a cap on how much the the program could grow and it did for the first four or five
00:20:36.780years save us quite a bit because ontario's payment would have been much higher without that
00:20:41.500but then once the provinces started converging after 2015 for some reason they didn't make it
00:20:47.580a cap on how much payments could grow they made it a rule for how much payments will grow so
00:20:53.340payments didn't need to grow nearly as much anymore but this rule that initially was put in
00:20:58.620to keep it from going out of control was now inflating the payments more than needed so that
00:21:04.060seems like the easiest thing to get rid of is to just say yes we're going to keep it sustainable
00:21:10.140by making sure it never surpasses this level but when the provinces are relatively equal we won't
00:21:15.420pay out as much so you know it's funny because it strikes me that what you've described should give
00:21:21.100us a formula for how we would be able to get rid of equalization altogether that eventually you
00:21:27.900would think if the country was operating properly and had good government eventually you would see
00:21:32.860a convergence that there would be so little difference between the provinces that you
00:21:36.300wouldn't need the program or any differences could be explained by lower cost of living so
00:21:41.420you wouldn't need the program and every province would be doing what they could to generate
00:21:46.060all revenue from all sources so that they could be more self-reliant so you wouldn't need the program
00:21:50.780and so how i mean if if you if we're talking i know you don't want to get into the politics of
00:21:55.980it because it seems like it doesn't matter which political party we have in there they don't want
00:21:59.100to tackle this one but how would you begin that process i mean could you set some target up to
00:22:05.820say by the time your province gets within x percent of the average you're you're cut off
00:22:12.780equalization like there seems to be need to be some other way of graduating from this program
00:22:17.500and saying bravo now go out and stand on your own two feet and i don't know what those objective
00:22:22.780measures would be, but I bet you have some idea. Yeah, I mean, Premier Legault has said we look
00:22:29.700forward to getting off equalization and becoming a half province. And so that's great. But, you know,
00:22:36.460things like taking advantage of your natural resources would be one of the best ways to ever
00:22:41.680achieve that. So it's fine to say that, but it'd be nice if actions backed it up. Yeah, I think
00:22:47.480that you know obviously if you turned around i i've had a quote from the premier of new brunswick
00:22:54.280higgs and saying you know this is about 25 of our our budget and he he put in the context of
00:23:00.200worrying about alberta's economy and if albertans aren't there to kind of pitch in and make some of
00:23:04.760these programs sustainable for us we'll be in bankruptcy problems before long so um i can see
00:23:12.280why you wouldn't be able to just cut them off tomorrow but something like a 10-year phase out
00:23:18.440and and and restructuring the program so that it really only is there when people really need it
00:23:25.160you know sort of like the fiscal stabilization program in theory it's there for when you have
00:23:29.400a drop of more than five percent in a given year so it's you know it's a it's a it's the kind of
00:23:34.840emergency you would you would do an insurance claim over um not something that's there every
00:23:40.280time you you know need a little bit of cash and something you become chronically uh accustomed to
00:23:46.280so that there's in theory yes that is entirely possible in practice there will be people who say
00:23:52.440uh where they're you know the constitution says we're committed to making payments to help make
00:23:57.160sure everyone's reasonably equal um again it's it's extremely vague in terms of the constitution
00:24:05.160i've i've seen virtually no constitutional scholars think that the government could turn
00:24:10.520around tomorrow and say you know what we're cutting this down to uh 25 of what it was before
00:24:16.040and and saying the biggest four provinces can't can't ever be eligible for payments uh they could
00:24:21.720do that tomorrow and nobody would have a constitutional leg to stand on so there's
00:24:26.200there's a lot of flexibility uh there's a lot of principled things you could do to reduce
00:24:31.960the size and make problems as more independent. But it's a matter of generating the will amongst
00:24:40.520people and then the will amongst the decision makers and then the political will amongst the
00:24:45.240leaders. You've given us a couple of ideas about how we could adjust it. So maintain federal
00:24:50.920transfers but transfer differently. So tell me a little more about this fiscal stabilization fund
00:24:57.640because i think you've got the nut of a really good idea there because if you had it sitting
00:25:03.320there as basically an insurance policy in the event everybody declines i think you said by
00:25:09.560five percent is that is that what it currently is first of all let's talk about this tell us
00:25:13.400how the program currently works and then tell me how it is that alberta got so disadvantaged out
00:25:18.840of it so we can see if we can solve two problems at once so what was the the notion behind this
00:25:24.040fiscal stabilization fund it was there because you know in a similar way to the equalization theory
00:25:29.800that we don't want to see people in one province unable to provide basic services or afford basic
00:25:36.280services you know we don't want to walk across the border to lloydminster saskatchewan side and
00:25:41.000see people dying in parking lots because they can't help them in a hospital um and so the
00:25:46.040fiscal stabilization is recognizing the provinces are the main deliverer of services and if there's
00:25:52.360a collapse in revenue in a given province in a given year we don't want them you know suddenly
00:25:57.160severely rationing basic services to avoid bankruptcy so we'll putting in this stabilization
00:26:04.200fund to ensure that for that year at least they can be covered and and manage their problem but
00:26:10.200it only kicks in when you drop more than five percent so there is a kind of we expect certain
00:26:16.040fluctuations just like we might expect fluctuations between you know ontario and quebec but that
00:26:21.880shouldn't trigger massive financial payments. That's just the natural course of things. But
00:26:28.300when there's a sort of catastrophic drop in revenue, then this kicks in. The problem was
00:26:33.780that in 1982, they decided to set it at a per capita level and didn't adjust it. The
00:26:40.680per capita level was entirely vaguely determined. There was a pretty much arbitrary number they
00:26:47.260picked from the most recent thing that happened in BC at the time. And so the result was a 1982
00:26:54.940arbitrary cap turned into Albertans only being eligible for 250 million dollars of
00:27:01.180stabilization when the revenues had dropped 8 billion. And so when Albertans were suddenly
00:27:08.380in dire need of something to help make sure they can keep services going, all that was there was
00:27:15.100250 million now pei gets 400 million every year from oh my goodness so we're a province of 4.4
00:27:22.940million have an eight billion dollar collapse in revenue we get 250 million you got a province of
00:27:27.260a hundred thousand people that gets 400 million every year regardless oh boy those numbers really
00:27:32.700stand out and manitoba and new brunswick which are a quarter of our size or less they get a
00:27:38.2202 billion a year from equalization. So it was just manifestly preposterous that this is all we got
00:27:45.740in return. And so if there was something like that for equalization that basically said,
00:27:51.100you know, if you're running below average, if you've had some struggles with your economy,
00:27:55.260here's a kind of sustainable amount of money that will give you to help get you through it
00:28:00.540for the next five years. I think that's something everybody could get behind. It's this chronic
00:28:06.300redistribution to the same five provinces every year uh at such staggering levels uh that's that's
00:28:14.140you know i would argue that after when you see how much quebec is getting uh 13 billion dollars
00:28:21.100even though they're very close to average or added if you if you count it correctly when on when
00:28:26.060quebec can balance budgets and start putting away a savings fund that's going to be bigger than our
00:28:31.740heritage fund pretty soon providing the highest levels of services yes that's partly funded by
00:28:37.180their high taxes but without the 13 billion a year they were getting from equalization
00:28:42.300they wouldn't be balancing anything and they would maybe think twice about some of their lavish
00:28:46.700services so i would say that if the purpose of equalization is to ensure promises are relatively
00:28:53.260equal in their service delivery it's over equalizing is actually making it relatively
00:28:59.580harder for Alberta, Ontario, BC to keep up with Quebec and the expectations that they are setting
00:29:06.540with all the free money that they're getting every year from a flawed program.
00:29:11.120Well, it's such a good comparison on the other end to be looking at the 13 billion they get
00:29:15.580consistently and then comparing it to the 250 million we got back when we had such hard times.
00:29:21.480Do you have a recommendation for how that fiscal stabilization formula should work? And as you say,
00:29:27.380it's the kind of thing everyone should be able to get behind, even when the NDP were in power.
00:29:31.280Joe Sisi, who was finance minister at the time, and Rachel Notley, both said that it was
00:29:36.940manifestly unfair as well and wanted to make the change to it. Did we ever get a revision
00:29:42.840to that program that is something that's sustainable in the long run?
00:29:46.080Yeah, interestingly, a lot of people say that, you know, with regard to the referendum,
00:29:53.840Why didn't why don't we just go get shouldn't you just bring this up with the first ministers and shouldn't you just, you know, write a letter to the prime minister?
00:30:03.000We managed to get every premier to agree to give Alberta a retroactive payment for that 2015 collapse.
00:30:12.080And it's pretty it's not you know, it's not hard to get all the premiers to agree for the government to give them all more money.
00:30:17.600But it's pretty unusual, I think, for them to single out one province.
00:30:21.480I think Saskatchewan would have got a tiny bit as well.
00:30:23.840But we would have had a multi-billion dollar retroactive payment and that went to the federal government and they did tweak the cost of living up that $82 per person up to $180 or whatever.
00:30:40.660But maybe we could get 9% next time instead of 3%.
00:30:45.140So there was a small concession made to update that arbitrary cap a little bit, but they totally ignored the retroactive payment.
00:30:52.940So, yeah, I don't see why there should be a cap. I mean, it only kicks in. I mean, how many times can you drop more than 5% of your revenues, right? And if you do, you're in real trouble and you do need help. So, I don't see why there should be any cap on it.
00:31:09.360um when if i write off my car tomorrow uh i get my full car back i have to pay a premium so there
00:31:17.200should be a you know take off five percent for for what you uh for a premium but how about you
00:31:23.520help out the province that suddenly had a collapse because chances are if it's that much of a collapse
00:31:28.240it's one of those revenue producing natural revenue rich provinces who've been contributing
00:31:33.600immensely for the 20 years before that so exactly reciprocity there would be much welcome and help
00:31:40.400national unity let me make sure i understand how it would work so in this modern time that we're
00:31:46.000dealing with i think we're up to about 60 billion dollars with the revenue right now so if we had a
00:31:51.360five percent decline off of that now we're now we're down three billion dollars and if we went
00:31:57.040down as low as you know 10 billion dollars uh because that can happen with our resource revenues
00:32:02.640is it a dollar for dollar uh way of of support or do you give 50 cents on the dollar or what is the
00:32:08.560what would be the rule of thumb it's it's i think it's dollar for a dollar after the five percent
00:32:14.640and you think that would be you think that would be acceptable to the rest of the country because
00:32:17.760i guess this is just it our our resource revenues are so volatile volatile and such huge variations
00:32:23.120so we're getting almost 13.8 billion this year in resource revenues i think it's been down as low
00:32:27.760as 2 billion it would seem like that fiscal stabilization formula might be unfair in the
00:32:33.600opposite direction where people would feel like we would get overcompensated quite sure resource
00:32:37.680revenues are only counted at 50 percent so that this uh adjusts for some of that volatility and
00:32:44.080yeah you could uh definitely curtail the amount of that's subject to resource revenues and just
00:32:50.320look at things like personal income tax because that was a major part of our drop in in 2015 was
00:32:56.320general tax revenues so yeah there's ways you could tweak it but it just when when a province
00:33:01.760faces that kind of collapse it should be getting somewhere close to the amount of support that
00:33:08.160these chronic recipient provinces are getting every single year that's it's such a good point
00:33:12.720and i think the other point that you raised that even if it is a resource revenue drop chances are
00:33:18.560there's it's been preceded by a series of years where that particular province has paid multiple
00:33:24.720billions into the general pot and so the that that itself would would probably not be over overly
00:33:30.960compensated if it's just a year or two of additional support no and another way i put it was
00:33:35.120albertans have been fiscally stabilizing this country for 20 years uh over about 324 billion
00:33:42.640went from 2000 to 2020 um so we put in 324 billion that's about uh 324 000 per house per family uh
00:33:57.040over 20 years and then when when we have a collapse and need help they cap that out at
00:34:04.08070 per person after we gave oh my god in the year we're basically giving 5 000 a year to stabilize
00:34:12.160the country and when we need something back it's capped at 70 or 170 dollars now per person okay
00:34:19.120what do you think would if if we were thinking this through and talking this through what what
00:34:23.440was the ask for that one-time retroactive payment in 2015 what should it have been should it have
00:34:28.160been more like five billion dollars seven billion number was we calculated it should have been about
00:34:33.120eight i think they ended up asking for about six and a half and we and we've got a a bit of a
00:34:38.800raspberry okay so so let's then uh let's then talk about another solution because i think that
00:34:46.080there's some wisdom in what you've put forward there for fiscal stabilization making it a i mean
00:34:51.920it should be a true stabilization program so that you don't end up having to dramatically cut any of
00:34:56.960your social services but would it then require for there to be a pot of money just sitting there
00:35:02.480and how big of a pot should it be yeah i mean i don't i don't see why they couldn't uh uh
00:35:09.360when when the provinces are relatively equal maybe the amount that isn't used for the 22
00:35:16.080billion should go into a special provincial assistance pot for things to draw down on
00:35:21.440things like that or um or you know pandemic suddenly they decide to to break into that pot
00:35:27.360and give every province a thousand dollars per person to help with pandemic health supports or
00:35:32.880something like that but you know if there's if there's resistance to the idea of cutting provincial
00:35:38.640spending from the feds entirely then let's do it differently and do it smarter and have things
00:35:43.600like that in reserve for when provinces have real problems well miss i guess you raised a good
00:35:48.480example with covid because that's the only other circumstance is um alberta was in an unusual
00:35:54.800situation where we got hit disproportionately hard because of the decline in resource revenues but
00:36:00.080you'd expect that if there's some dramatic drop in revenues is probably across the board is probably
00:36:06.000everybody's suffering the same the same problem is that is that i don't know historically if that
00:36:10.240would hold true but that would be my guess yeah there was a lot made of suddenly alberta being
00:36:15.760a net recipient that one year in the middle of the pandemic but that was a little bit uh that
00:36:20.960that was not really honestly presented because that was the result of the federal government
00:36:25.720suddenly taking $350 billion of debt to pay everybody.
00:36:30.320And most of those were employment supports.
00:36:32.220And yes, Albertans have more employed people usually than other provinces.
00:36:36.660So we got a little bit extra money out of that.
00:37:20.140But the thing I'd ultimately like to see is just the whole shift in the balance of tax power.
00:37:27.180The federal tax power is kind of problematic. It makes our provinces dependent on Ottawa,
00:37:35.500it makes them subject to their whims on how they want us to spend the money. And when you think
00:37:40.460about what services matter to us on a day to day basis, health and education and roads and things
00:37:48.460like that um why do we pay twice as much to ottawa as we do to the province they it doesn't
00:37:57.020make sense so what i'd like to see is a tax point shift so that the wealthier provinces that have
00:38:02.780different pressures and different costs and higher cost levels and and that need the resources to
00:38:09.180keep up with you know so they can pay a teacher as much as their neighbor who's working on a welding
00:38:14.300rig those kind of pressures are real in the prosperous provinces and we want the prosperous
00:38:19.980provinces to remain prosperous and attractive to labor uh so i just think there should be a shift
00:38:25.500of tax points of a significant nature so that at least we're paying if anything we should be paying
00:38:30.140twice as much as the province as the feds but if we get to 50 50 i think that would solve a lot of
00:38:35.420our problems oh i love what you're saying i do my own taxes and i was just looking at that sheet
00:38:39.900where it does the summary documents i couldn't believe it that it literally is double that you're
00:38:44.940you're paying federal versus provincial let's walk through in case people don't understand
00:38:49.900the different approaches that you've just outlined here because i think that there is one solution
00:38:55.740where you look at the other transfers that we do which are based on a per capita basis which would
00:39:01.100be less onerous or less unfair to uh to albert and i want to walk through why it is you you think
00:39:08.060that that that might be an interim step but not a not a permanent step because i think that that
00:39:12.540sows the seed of of us having a really constructive conversation with the rest of the country so if i
00:39:17.660remember the history on this we used to have a canada health and social transfer and then they
00:39:24.700split out the canada health transfer from the canada social transfer and they had different
00:39:29.420rules for them both i don't remember what the original rules were for the canada health transfer
00:39:33.740you might have to remind me of it. But it was significant because I think that Stephen Harper
00:39:40.080might not get enough credit for this. It was significant that he did say, we're going to
00:39:45.060transfer to each province on an equal per capita basis, because that allows for at least some
00:39:51.140fairness between individuals. It doesn't get at this original problem. We talked about that the
00:39:55.660cost of living is higher in some of the half provinces. So those transfers don't go quite as
00:40:01.600far as elsewhere, but at least you get something as opposed to nothing. I mean, imagine having a
00:40:06.740Canada health transfer that only went to the five have not provinces or a social transfer that only
00:40:11.820went to the five have not provinces. That would be seen to be absurd as well. And so I think
00:40:17.660they've moved in the right direction on per capita, but you said that there is still some
00:40:22.280disparity or equalization aspects of those programs that we need to be aware of. What are those?
00:40:27.640Yeah, well, when Albertans pay for a federal dollar on a per capita basis, they pay about $1.15 lately, and it was as high as $1.20 just because we pay more taxes per person because of the higher incomes.
00:40:46.900yes but the fact is albertans pay about 15 to 20 percent more per person in taxes than other
00:40:53.300provinces so to get that dollar back from ottawa we have to pay a buck 15. whereas someone like
00:41:01.540quebec only pays 95 cents to get that buck back and in new brunswick it's 90 cents to get that
00:41:07.380dollar back so because of the different incomes across the country every time the federal
00:41:13.140government grows by a dollar, Albertans lose at least 15 cents. And that's only when we get the
00:41:18.340full dollar back. So what you had happening before 2014 was there was an equalization component in
00:41:25.520the health transfer. And they basically said, if you're over a certain amount of fiscal capacity,
00:41:30.020I think is how they used it. And Alberta was the only one that fit that bill. You get your
00:41:36.140health transfers clawed back because you don't need as much help. And so in addition to paying
00:41:41.820a buck 15 for all the dollars that were going out we were only getting about 80 you know 80 85 cents
00:41:47.440on the dollar back so there was a double equalization that that the harper government
00:41:51.740got rid of uh but but still today you know if we just paid alberta our tax dollars to pay for health
00:41:59.760we wouldn't lose anything it would all stay in the province every dollar we put into health would go
00:42:05.280into health in our province but as it is because of the different disparity across the country even
00:42:10.920And when you get a dollar back, you're paying a buck 15 for it.
00:42:13.620So I would like to see instead of increasing the health transfer, I would like to see the federal government or someone get into the federal government that says, you know what?
00:42:25.900We are going to shift the way this all works and we will drop taxes 4% or 5% and we expect the provinces to raise it 5% to even it out.
00:42:37.460But maybe your province needs to do 6%.
00:42:40.340maybe your province can get away with only doing 4%, but we are giving up 5% of our tax base to
00:42:46.600the provinces to promote independence and get auto out of their business. That would be my dream
00:42:52.140scenario. Yeah. So you have a couple of numbers off the top of your head, which I think really
00:42:56.900well illustrated it. What about our friends in Ontario and BC who should be just as mad as we
00:43:02.080are? How is there, what's the proper term for this? Is it tax efficiency? I mean, if you're
00:43:06.580paying a buck 15 or a buck 20 to get a buck back. That doesn't seem very efficient to me. So
00:43:11.200I don't know what the correct terminology is. It's the have provinces that have more incomes
00:43:16.600to tax, pay a bigger share. And theirs is about $1.5 in BC and $1.7 in Ontario. So it's basically
00:43:25.240a 7% premium on every federal dollar. And so it's frustrating. I did speak with the
00:43:32.220parliamentary secretary for premier forward on intergovernmental relations uh when i a couple
00:43:36.380years ago when we visited there and i just said you do realize though that you know as someone
00:43:40.860running a provincial budget you might love it when ottawa gives you free money but your taxpayers
00:43:46.220probably don't because they're paying about a buck seven to ottawa in order to get that dollar
00:43:51.660to come back to their provincial government and he's you know i hadn't really thought of it that
00:43:56.220way so i'm we're having some success and getting some people to think about these things uh from
00:44:01.900a taxpayer's perspective because ultimately that should be what matters uh but it's but it's always
00:44:07.180hard when you're a person when you're a premier running a province you know i think back in 1957
00:44:12.140probably when they started this there was these negotiations and quebec wanted to raise their own
00:44:16.780taxes and and told ottawa to butt out i think some of the other problems were like hmm do i want
00:44:22.380ottawa to just give us the money or do i want them to then make us raise taxes and tax people
00:44:27.980directly and and maybe the politicians kind of prefer to have someone else do the raising of
00:44:34.220the money for them even if it means giving up some of the autonomy interesting it would be nice to
00:44:39.580reset that clock uh all the way back to 1957 and have premiers look ahead and say you know what
00:44:45.420ottawa thank you for the offer of refunding some of our federal tax dollars but how about you just
00:44:49.740cut federal taxes and let us tax it ourselves you have just solved a mystery to me about why we've
00:44:55.100put up with this for so long or where it began and everybody likes to poke poke to the other guy and
00:45:00.780say oh it's their fault when a bad decision is made but it's my uh it i get the glory when it's
00:45:07.580a good decision so if provinces want to get all the glory for spending the money and they wanted
00:45:12.140to pick the ottawa as the bad guy for taxing in a way that makes that makes more sense to me than
00:45:17.580anything i've heard because this allowing it to get this out of whack is so unacceptable i have
00:45:23.100to wonder what are the political motivations of keeping it there and you've helped fill one of
00:45:26.940the gaps for me now the other the other thing i want to just really underscore what you said
00:45:32.540because i've said this in speeches and now you've given me some some actual dollar figures i can use
00:45:38.140to to talk about this is i say every time the federal government announces a new national
00:45:45.660program. They want Alberta to disproportionately pay for it, that we will always end up paying
00:45:52.240more and getting less. And so when you talk about national daycare, national dentistry,
00:45:58.220national pharmacare, national long-term care, I saw a story that suggested that those were going
00:46:03.260to be $25 billion a year, more in federal spending. And based on what you've told me,
00:46:10.360that for every dollar Alberta gets back, we're going to be spending anywhere from $1.15 to $1.20
00:46:17.200in extra taxes. Another way to do it is take whatever this total envelope is, and about 15%
00:46:24.800to 17% of that is going to come from Albertans, but we're never going to get more than 11.5% back.
00:46:31.320So the bigger that bill gets, the bigger the net transfer to Canadians gets. So if you scaled
00:46:38.460everything back to core federal government functions uh you know defense national banking
00:46:45.580the the things that they're constitutionally required to do you know no albertan would say
00:46:51.340i i don't you know i don't care if i make more money i'm not willing to disproportionately pay
00:46:56.300for national defense no they wouldn't um but the problem is the federal government is getting
00:47:02.380so big and getting further and further into provincial affairs that albertans are paying
00:47:07.580thousands, you know, $2,400, $600 per person it works out to roughly, just taking the total
00:47:14.660tax base out of Alberta for equalization. Now that $600 is going, more than half of it's going
00:47:20.880to Quebec to fund their provincial government. Now I have no say in how Quebec's provincial
00:47:28.060government decides to spend those dollars. I have no say in how the economic policies they decide
00:47:33.880on that maybe keep them from reaching their potential but i'm forced to pay 600 equivalent
00:47:41.800every year to pay for their provincial government and and the ones beside them it's just it's just
00:47:48.680so it divorces the accountability for the people making the decisions from the ones collecting the
00:47:53.640money from the ones paying the money and it's and it and if if the federal government would just
00:47:58.600take seriously that the people the government leaders making the decisions should be asking
00:48:05.080the people for the money for the things that they're spending the money on it's a pretty
00:48:09.160much basic principle of representative democracy that's being continually undermined the bigger the
00:48:14.040federal government gets and the more the redistribution happens the uh i guess the
00:48:18.520argument would be and this is what ottawa always says is that when they tax it at federal level
00:48:24.520it's their money and so they would be able to argue well the democratic accountability comes
00:48:30.760when we campaign on these things we campaign for all these national programs therefore we got the
00:48:35.800mandate therefore uh we have the ability to spend it as we as we please i'm sure you've got an answer
00:48:41.640to that yeah i'm not saying it's illegal i'm saying it's bad politics and and that and but
00:48:48.520people aren't really aware of it and so we're you know if people can help us out and try and get this
00:48:53.880word across and people should share your show when you're talking about these topics and just
00:48:59.320kind of re-educate people as to what's actually going on with their tax dollars because it's too
00:49:06.040you know it's it's not something the mainstream media gets very excited about and and those who
00:49:11.880kind of prefer bigger government and don't really trust people keeping their profits to themselves
00:49:18.040um they're never going to want to open up this this topic generally or make a or highlight it
00:49:24.200so it's just something we have to keep working at to get people to understand it and and like i said
00:49:30.360we're trying to target people in bc and ontario because they're the ones that have a lot in
00:49:35.960common with us on this uh equalization is hardly just an alberto problem we've got saskatchewan's
00:49:41.560already on board um but the general problem of of well productive regions footing an increasingly
00:49:50.040large bill for the federal government to redistribute to for political reasons and for
00:49:55.480other reasons uh it's just a growing growing problem and it needs to have somebody willing
00:50:01.400to put a stop to it and and it requires millions of people to want to put a stop to it completely
00:50:07.320And I, you know, I did have somebody come up to me after I talked about some of the data that you put forward and Rob and others have put forward and they said, I didn't know it was that bad.
00:50:18.440So now thank you for the role that you are doing in educating people, because I had felt like the solution on equalization might be to just roll it into transfers, because I think that was one of the things that Scott Moe suggested.
00:50:31.640he said fine keep 50 of what we currently have in the fund let's call it 20 billion dollars just for
00:50:37.160ease of calculation so if we're gonna have 20 billion dollars in equalization take 10 billion
00:50:42.440of it and distribute it out to the provinces on a per capita basis because then we'd at least get
00:50:47.560something in the half provinces and then you still have a pot of money in in equalization there seemed
00:50:52.280to be some merit to that what did you think of that proposal i i mean i like it as the kind of
00:50:58.120of politically compromised sort of solution that should be something people could sell.
00:51:06.400I'd much rather get 90 cents back on the dollar than zero, which is what is currently the case.
00:51:12.320But as I said, I'd rather maybe that be part of a bigger picture where they say,
00:51:18.120we're going to top up health transfers with this bit of equalization money. And then we're still
00:51:24.120going to uh do a tax point transfer to shift the the tax room from the federal from the federal
00:51:31.480government to provinces i just i feel like there's a message there that most would resonate with
00:51:36.600yeah like how upset could quebecers get uh about the government wanting to give them tax points
00:51:44.040i mean and they would but they'd say oh they're trying to screw up well we're giving you tax
00:51:49.160points you get more autonomy i just feel like it it's a sellable message uh if if you lay the
00:51:55.320groundwork if you put it if you did it correctly i guess i i have no one has this long uh time
00:52:00.520horizon but i figured what if if it's 20 billion dollars just shifted a billion dollars per year
00:52:07.400towards the transfers and then each province could make their own deal with the federal government
00:52:12.600to do the tax point transfer that you're talking about so it seems to me like we need a simultaneous
00:52:17.400elimination of this equalization approach towards something that is more fair, which gives you the
00:52:24.460individual per capita transfers. But knowing how unfair it is to us, it's pretty clear we should
00:52:30.200switch automatically to just saying, you know what, we don't want transfers from you anymore.
00:52:35.800We'll take the equivalent amount in tax points. I need people to understand a little better about
00:52:40.780how that works. Because part of the issue is that we're not really synced up on our tax rates
00:52:47.020anymore. We've got different tax brackets that kick in at different levels, and there's different
00:52:51.920percentages. So I'm still a bit unclear about how it is that we would make that adjustment. I'm
00:52:59.200sure you've given some thought to that. But let me let me ask the first question, because it sounds
00:53:03.320to me like you've done this calculation. The federal level of government is actually pretty
00:53:07.780boring weights and measures and central banking and international agreements and i mean defense
00:53:17.060is the most important area and it's it's woefully behind what our international commitment should be
00:53:23.620foreign aid is important but again i don't think we're meeting our international commitments there
00:53:27.780seems like the federal government wants to deliver on every program except for take care of the
00:53:33.860business that they are constitutionally mandated to take care of now if they were just to focus
00:53:39.540on the things that they do and do it well how big would that not be do you know how like i'm trying
00:53:45.780to figure out how small we can get our federal government is there some way that you can put
00:53:50.500that into numbers for us yeah the easiest way i i did a looked at their budget a couple years ago
00:53:57.620and uh they were just a little over 300 billion dollars overall 75 billion of that was going to
00:54:04.900provincial transfers direct to provinces so the health transfer you know 55 billion for chd and
00:54:11.780cst that's kind of social transfer and then 20 billion for equalization another 4 billion to the
00:54:17.140territories so that was about a quarter of their budget another quarter though was in payments to
00:54:22.500persons for things like child child care uh child benefits seniors benefits um disabilities the
00:54:31.300things like that which which under the original constitution should fall under provincial as well
00:54:37.220so if we got them entirely out of those two things that's half the budget and then there's that's not
00:54:42.820accounting some of the things like post-secondary uh there's there's still cult arts and culture
00:54:48.980you could say shouldn't really be federal um there's a there's a bunch of smaller things
00:54:54.020but it's at least half the budget all right let's be let's be ferocious about this then
00:54:59.220so let's assume that we want to get to a position where we are only sending to ottawa the money
00:55:06.900that is our portion of their of the the uh of of the federal programs that they provide
00:55:13.860and we're telling them we don't want your transfers anymore we just want the tax points
00:55:18.100we will collect all the money that we need and don't you worry about transferring us or our
00:55:22.340people one penny how would that adjustment look from a tax point point of view would it essentially
00:55:28.020be i mean you talked about it would basically like if because if if a federal is double the
00:55:34.260size of provincial and we're talking about cutting federal in half then the provincial
00:55:38.100would be doubled and it would it would just flip them yeah so yeah so in that circumstance
00:55:45.220it wouldn't seem to make much sense for the federal government to collect our personal
00:55:49.460income taxes on our behalf now would it i mean if if the lion's share of the money
00:55:54.420is coming to us and ought to come to us and a smaller portion goes to them wouldn't it make
00:56:00.980sense that one of the reforms we should be looking for is to collect our own personal
00:56:04.740income taxes so that we can take more control over that yeah that would make sense um but
00:56:11.540again we're talking about the federal government kind of giving up a lot of its like even even the
00:56:18.980smaller government folks at the federal scene usually want to do different smaller government
00:56:25.140things with federal dollars there's just um it's it's a long uphill battle to get you know get the
00:56:31.780king to give up that much power to the nobles uh and and but but if you work hard enough at it and
00:56:38.260don't give them a choice and get enough people uh demanding it then you know if if it means
00:56:44.980i'm holding on to the greater toronto and greater vancouver area and staying in government then you
00:56:49.540might get somebody to do it but but it's going to take a lot of of plowing the fields in places like
00:56:55.380that to get the people on board because that's the only way it's going to happen so tell me
00:57:00.260are there any efficiency arguments that you can make from canada revenue agency because that's
00:57:05.620what uh i mean even our own provincial politicians obviously no one has ever decided to pursue that
00:57:11.780even though we have great capacity to raise taxes we seem to be able to manage complex programs to
00:57:17.220collect royalties and everything else but somehow we're to believe that it all falls apart when it
00:57:21.860comes to personal income tax but it does strike me that if there are all of these inefficiencies
00:57:27.540in every other program that we pay more than we get back in return i'm i'm questioning whether
00:57:35.060there are very many efficiencies in canada revenue agency i'm questioning whether it really would cost
00:57:41.380all that much for us to repatriate that function because let's face it businesses are the tax
00:57:46.580collector for the country they're the ones who write the checks to the employees and remit the
00:57:52.100taxes on their behalf the only real function that a bureaucracy has is an audit function to make
00:57:58.420sure that everybody's telling the truth so it doesn't strike me that this should be a huge
00:58:03.620additional expense but maybe there's something i'm missing and i want to put it to you have you
00:58:06.500thought that through yeah i mean i also remember 10 years ago people suggesting we should stop
00:58:12.100collecting corporate taxes because it's just we can empty out one tower of bureaucrats uh close
00:58:16.820to the legislature there if we just let the feds do it uh i do but then i've heard there are very
00:58:22.020good reasons given the uniqueness of our energy sector and other things for us to be doing that
00:58:26.180ourselves i've i've read something recently about quebec i did a study on how much they could save
00:58:32.020by letting the feds by giving up their provincial revenue collection and it was about 400 million
00:58:37.860they thought they could save if they just let the feds do it so given that they're twice our size
00:58:42.900i'm assuming it's something like uh um 200 200 maybe 170 million dollars uh to add those
00:58:51.380bureaucrats to do it here and and i'm just not sold like if you asked me if i'd rather spend
00:58:56.980170 000 on collecting our taxes and having bureaucrats uh downtown or a provincial police
00:59:03.460force i think i'd much rather spend the money on something like that which seems to have a more
00:59:07.940meaningful uh and also a possible improvement on services so uh but i think it wouldn't be a little
00:59:15.860you know it's a sizable expense if out of principle we wanted to do it we could for sure
00:59:21.060there's no problem with the competency etc but uh but it is it is a significant cost and and i think
00:59:28.020probably people would maybe agree with me that if we're gonna put 170 million into something the
00:59:34.180feds are already doing i'd rather do the policing side you know what it is for me it's it's to make
00:59:38.660those lines very clear it's that right now ottawa acts like it's all their money and they're doing
00:59:44.820us a favor to give us some of it back and i think it's also masked just how unfair the differential
00:59:52.580has become because let's face it i don't think most people are nerds like me and do their own
00:59:56.100taxes they they probably get h and r block to do it and they just know either they're getting a
01:00:00.020return or they're not they're probably not all that clear on who gets what right and on the payroll
01:00:04.900payroll tabs it just says income tax right right so i i kind of like to demand that in alberta you
01:00:12.020separate the two and say nice parts estimated for feds and which is estimated for province
01:00:17.300oh well i like the clarity around that because people then would ask the question how much are
01:00:21.220we getting back all right we're not going to cut we'll we'll we'll fight this one to a draw i still
01:00:25.540think that personally collecting our personal income tax is the the most important step that
01:00:29.380we can take as a step to telling ottawa that we really are going to be doing things differently
01:00:34.500now so let's let's walk through then um i i asked you a double-barreled question so the other part
01:00:40.740of the question was the transfer of tax points so does that mean that you just look at all of the
01:00:46.740different tax brackets we have and i think it's like a 12 and a or there's a 10 and a 12 and a
01:00:52.74015 i think there's four it would basically be the feds would decide what they're cutting so they
01:00:59.060maybe they would take their 26 and drop to 24 and take 23 and drop to 21 and like shift everything
01:01:05.140down however many points worked out to the amount of dollars they were basically willing to give up
01:01:10.020got it um and then the provinces would turn around and say okay they were now going to be getting um
01:01:16.260like alberta gets about seven billion dollars in health transfers so now we're only going to be
01:01:20.500getting two billion we need to find a way to make up that five billion in alberta that's about five
01:01:24.420percent tax point so they would the provinces could then just figure out what they need to
01:01:28.820increase to make up for the lost revenue that makes sense and so you you could you could put
01:01:33.460all of them up equally or you could decide that the middle group was going to take a little bit
01:01:37.460of a higher hit or you decided the higher income group was going to take a higher hit but it would
01:01:41.460be it would be a negotiated amount okay well that's fair enough and how easy would it be to
01:01:45.940do that okay so like let's say we put aside the issue of collecting our own personal income tax
01:01:52.020we can do this this tax point transfer even with the status quo system that we have what if we
01:01:56.740decided tomorrow all right all right ottawa we don't want to take your transfers anymore we're
01:02:02.100just going to shift to tax points let's do it ottawa would well i would think ottawa would say
01:02:08.100well interesting thought well we'll give it some thought but no we're going to keep sending you
01:02:12.420your transfers and taxing your people um but if if a government had a different opinion and saw
01:02:18.740there was a movement afoot that people wanted more provincial autonomy uh yeah it'd be extremely
01:02:24.900simple uh ottawa could announce as of you know july 1st our tax rates are blank and here's the
01:02:31.540new amount of health transfers you're getting and provinces you know figure out how to make up the
01:02:37.380shuffle and you now have more tax power you're welcome look at us uh making uh making the
01:02:42.980empowering the provinces i mean now quebec has been able to do that so why wouldn't we be able
01:02:48.820to do that or is it did it happen so long ago that everybody's forgotten the reasons for it and
01:02:54.020everybody just quietly uh ignores it and hopes no one else asks for the same thing well i mean it's
01:02:58.900it's less a matter of who is collecting the taxes and who you're sending your money to because you
01:03:05.540know the tax points would mean that suddenly you know if i was paying uh five thousand dollars to
01:03:11.460the province and ten thousand of the feds this year for taxes next year i'd be sending ten thousand
01:03:16.900of the province and five thousand the feds and again that makes the the people delivering the
01:03:22.100service the ones that are accountable to the people they're delivering it to to pay for it i
01:03:27.860I mean, it's a very simple principle and it, I think, leads to better government.
01:03:32.560And if the feds really wanted to hold on to a chunk so they could still threaten with Canada Health Act transgressions and things, that's probably something we can't get around.
01:03:43.840But just a major shift in just, you know, we don't need your help collecting our taxes for our services.
01:03:49.880And in fact, when you're Alberta, BC and Ontario, we don't need your help subsidizing other people's services.
01:03:55.820You know, either have equalization or do all this subsidization through all these other schemes where we pay in more than we get back.
01:04:03.460Pick one or the other, equalize through health transfers or equalize through equalization.
01:04:07.560But why are we double equalizing everything?
01:12:52.740I kind of think that the way our country ought to work and would work better, because each province has its own unique identity, its own unique priorities.
01:13:03.400I think trying to overlay a federal government perspective, which is so heavily influenced by the Quebec government perspective, trying to overlay that across the entire province, it just is asking for division.
01:13:16.920And so it strikes me that we would have a better federation if Quebec could be Quebec and Alberta could be Alberta.
01:13:21.480But I think that the opposite of that is that I think the federal government really feels it needs to take an activist role to keep us all together, that there's going to be something fundamentally unstable if they don't provide the baseline so that we have national standards.
01:13:37.400And I'm wondering how we argue that point, because I do really firmly believe that we would end up with less polarization and greater unity if we didn't constantly feel like we had programs or ideology or anti-energy sector rhetoric shoved down our throats.
01:13:57.300I think that it would actually lead to a more peaceful federation.
01:14:01.760I think all the things that we've been talking about will enrage some people. They have been enraging people for decades. But if the government can't get off its obsession with Alberta's energy sector and this notion that it's somehow untenable to keep Alberta's main economic engine functioning
01:14:30.620for the next 30 or 40 years while the world wants the product uh i mean i i did a political philosophy
01:14:37.180degree and one of the first sort of modern theorists was thomas hobbes and he basically said
01:14:41.820the state of nature is nasty and awful and you should just be happy to have a king who can keep
01:14:46.220order and as long as he's not trying to kill you you should you should be respectful and obey but
01:14:52.060then tom john locke came around and said yeah okay he as long as he's not killing you and stealing
01:14:57.500your property and making it so you can't you know thrive as a human being in economic sense
01:15:04.140then you kind of also have a revolution uh right to revolution so there's all these this is all the
01:15:11.020background these fiscal unfairnesses that are chronic and now there's this acute shift where
01:15:16.700our main sector is under attack and i i don't like it's it's to be to be just so disrespectful
01:15:24.940on so many levels and then ultimately to threaten people's future livelihood and the chance of their
01:15:30.700children to having anything like the life they had uh it's it's a awful recipe and i don't see
01:15:38.260how they can think it's sustainable um and there needs to be some wins and recognition and and uh
01:15:45.840and give something back to alberta and saskatchewan and bc or else it's just severely negligent
01:15:52.180governance and so yes i think provincial autonomy on a lot of these fronts uh is is uh is critical
01:15:59.860and i think it would go a long ways towards uh ensuring that country actually functions for
01:16:06.020another 50 years i i have to hope that it is not just uh targeting us for um for the for the sake
01:16:14.660of of winning votes in the rest of the country because it does appear that way i i i would i
01:16:19.620hope that there's just a disconnect of not fully understanding and appreciating how big the energy
01:16:26.740sector is how much it employs how much how integrated our various economies are because
01:16:32.900i remember when there was a fundamental turning point in alberta was when francois legault said
01:16:40.020we don't want your dirty oil but because of this escalator clause and equalization there's money
01:16:44.340left over so they ended up with an extra billion dollars at the same time as we're suffering with
01:16:48.100deficits and shortfalls and not able to get fiscal stabilization and they're not only bragging about
01:16:54.580balanced budgets but as you point out putting money away in the in their uh in their own savings
01:16:59.940account it just seems to me is there is there really that kind of disconnect i mean do they
01:17:05.620do they not understand how connected everybody's prosperity is because of alberta's prosperity
01:17:11.540again i i we used a lot we used that quote from premier higgs a lot and he just basically said
01:17:19.220if if alberta isn't prospering and paying the federal bill i don't know how we keep getting
01:17:23.980the payments we need to survive and provide basic services so he got it uh it's it's even i think if
01:17:30.120even if a quebec leader got it he couldn't say it out loud but on top of that there's this sort
01:17:36.140a slap in the face of geopolitical reality. I think it's one thing to think that what the world
01:17:43.620needs most is less carbon emissions and think that's the most noble thing you could sacrifice
01:17:49.480for. But when Canada decides to just boy scout itself, mostly at Alberta's expense, it then
01:17:57.780finds that people like Vladimir Putin suddenly feel like they're empowered and rich. And
01:18:05.120And, you know, Quebec also cancelled its LNG port, Saguenay facility it had planned.
01:18:12.660If that was in place right now, suddenly Europe would have an alternative to Putin.
01:18:17.180So it's just it's so short sighted to think that somehow making Canada poorer is going to save the world.
01:18:25.740And that really is what's at stake here, because there's no way any of these renewable projects are going to be anywhere near as beneficial to Canada
01:18:34.180as the energy sector has been uh we have this amazing world resource that anyone in the world
01:18:39.940would kill literally kill for uh and we're willing to basically strangle this goose that could lay
01:18:46.660so many golden eggs that go all over the country um and it's it's it's really infuriating maybe
01:18:53.060even more than things like uh chronic equalization payments you better before i ask you one one
01:19:00.020final question because i want to pursue this a little bit more with you how big is quebec's um
01:19:06.500heritage fund or whatever it is that they're calling it because i didn't even know that they
01:19:10.500were socking money away until i i think there was a maybe a column you wrote or a column i read in
01:19:14.820the newspaper and it's what in the world i mean we're if you've got billions of dollars to sock
01:19:21.380away then why are you still getting the same amount of equalization it seems so obvious to me
01:19:26.100that there's a problem here but what's the history of that fund yeah uh ted morton wrote about it i
01:19:31.860think first he's one of the vice presidents of fairness alberta and uh they they had a cert
01:19:37.700finally had a surplus uh four or five years ago and said you know what the responsible thing would
01:19:42.900be to do is put some of this away for for the generations fund and uh and it's it's scheduled
01:19:50.500to surpass the 17 billion in our heritage fund i think next year i don't maybe the pandemic affected
01:19:56.740what kind of results it had but that quickly they can they can sock away four or five
01:20:03.940billion of their surplus which is again instead of a five six seven billion deficit they have a
01:20:10.580four billion dollar surplus because of the 13 billion they're unfairly getting pre-equalization
01:20:15.940but at least they're i guess doing the responsible thing and putting some of it away for a future
01:20:19.860generations um yeah it's it's it's it's pretty pretty uh infuriating while at the same time
01:20:27.140uh you know yeah like you said not just taking a bunch of our dollars but sort of insulting us at
01:20:32.260the same time and so part of the bigger picture i think is is also taking this opportunity with
01:20:38.820the ukraine war and helping canadians get the geopolitical realities of canada shutting in its
01:20:46.420resources uh but that's a campaign that we're going to be taking also to ontario and bc in the
01:20:51.700next little bit because you know it's one thing to just view alberta as a cash cow but then it's
01:20:56.820another thing to kind of have a negative view of the cow so we're gonna see what we can do to uh
01:21:02.340help take this moment in in world history and and drive home messages that a lot of us have been
01:21:08.020giving for 10 or 20 years well i'm glad to hear that and you know what let's say bravo quebec
01:21:12.820they're becoming more fiscally conservative and that should be a positive thing but it would be
01:21:16.980nice if they would allow for us to get the full benefit of our resources the same way that they're
01:21:24.420that they have their autonomy to develop there's no michael binion who owns a company out there and
01:21:29.220he he has a natural gas company in quebec which should be a pretty lucrative thing in the eastern
01:21:35.060seaboard they all want natural gas out there and they want to export it but they've basically said
01:21:40.980nope and you know i should say as well that that particular project by quest air he wants to make
01:21:46.820it net zero as well because he believes that he can capture the co2 and either bury it or turn
01:21:50.820it into useful products so it wouldn't even increase their greenhouse gas emissions but
01:21:55.380he's still not sure they're going to even let that happen well that's what i'm curious about
01:21:59.220because as you may know i've been an early adopter of the the net zero by 2050 aspiration because i
01:22:06.100really think that with our poor space with the innovation that we have we've already figured out
01:22:12.260how to use co2 for enhanced oil recovery so we can use it for other things like carbon nanofiber
01:22:18.260and cement and plastics and uh and poly and plastics or an ethylene and so on and so forth
01:22:25.060so i really and hydrogen as well there's a huge hydrogen conference last week that had 4 000 or
01:22:32.100more delegates to it the federal government was there i feel like okay you set this target out
01:22:37.700for us that you wanted us to deal with our emissions we're going to deal with it a different
01:22:42.020way we're not going to keep it in the ground um we're going to develop our resource and we're
01:22:46.260just going to do something useful with the co2 so it doesn't get into the atmosphere and that
01:22:50.900seems to me like it should be enough of a unifying vision that quebec shouldn't be opposed to us
01:22:56.900that we should be able to meet national targets but still also have some really exciting new
01:23:03.460industries that develop here based on our traditional resources and our traditional
01:23:07.140knowledge this seems like a win all the way around and that makes me wonder are they targeting
01:23:13.140us because they want us to fail as opposed to because they just don't want a natural gas
01:23:19.620or oil resources to be used at all, it almost feels like it's wishing that we didn't have this
01:23:28.920dominant place in confederation. And that's a harder thing to argue against if that's really
01:23:34.380what is underlying all of this. I was speaking to somebody a week ago who said he's been doing,
01:23:39.660he's done meetings for a decade in Ottawa over energy issues. And he likes to ask at least one
01:23:44.900point during the meeting, if the oil sands was on the Ontario-Quebec border, would it get a
01:23:51.880different level of support? And as you can imagine, it's a rhetorical question which generates
01:23:58.100much discomfort amongst the elites in Ottawa, because it's pretty obvious that it would.
01:24:05.680And that is extremely frustrating. And again, I try to stick to the facts and try to be a happy
01:24:14.020warrior on some of these things but it does get pretty frustrating that they don't see how unfair
01:24:18.980it is it it strikes me that that's a fundamental problem that we've got to fight against because
01:24:24.580i i've often wondered what do we really need to do here do we need to have an aspiration that
01:24:30.180we're going to have a population equivalent to give back because if we had a population equivalent
01:24:36.260to give back with our level of economic activity and not only are we an important voter base but
01:24:42.660but then also an important economic driver,
01:24:45.580would that change the dynamic of the country?
01:24:47.780Should we just be going 100% full out to say,
01:24:51.220we are going to be bigger than Quebec.