In this inaugural episode of Western Standard Uncensored, the panelists discuss the Equalization Referendum, and how Albertans should view it. The panel is: Bill Buick Danielle Smith Rob McAllister
00:02:50.020It's hot. It's warm. Good evening to you at home.
00:02:52.700Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Western Standards Uncensored. This is a political
00:02:58.160panel with a punch, and it is our inaugural episode. As Derek mentioned, we're going to
00:03:03.680talk about everything under the sun that matters to Albertans, frankly, and Canadians for that
00:03:09.340matter. And it's clear that a lot of issues that make the mainstream media maybe aren't discussed
00:03:15.820as they should be, or you could say there would be a left-leaning narrative that accompanies them.
00:03:20.980we're going to try and break that down this panel will ask tough questions we will ask real questions
00:03:26.100and it will be a thoughtful and thorough debate some of the things we'll talk about in upcoming
00:03:32.200episodes vaccine passports your personal freedoms we will talk about the free alberta strategy
00:03:39.200launched by one of our panelists tonight but tonight we're going to talk about the upcoming
00:03:44.240equalization referendum we go to the polls on october the 18th in a municipal election
00:03:50.840One of the questions that we're going to be asked, we're going to put up on the screen for you, concerns equalization and how Albertans should view it.
00:03:58.980And when you get my age, you need to put these glasses on. I want to read this correctly.
00:04:03.320Should Motion 36.2 of the Constitution Act, 1982, Parliament and the Government of Canada's commitment to the principle of making equalization payments be removed from the Constitution?
00:04:15.240Let's meet the panelists that are going to discuss this tonight. I want to start with Bill Buick.
00:04:19.580Bill is the executive director of Fairness Alberta.
00:04:22.460He was the lead on policy for the Wild Rose from 2010 to 2017.
00:04:27.040Guy we always describe as a big brain and a deep thinker.
00:04:30.580Bill, thanks for joining us from Edmonton.
00:05:42.940Why don't we just stay right with you for the first question?
00:05:45.940okay you've seen the question on the screen what do you make of it why should Albertans be voting
00:05:50.720yes you know the first time I heard about this strategy I didn't think it was going to be
00:05:55.420successful I think Brian Jean was actually the first person to mention the idea of voting on
00:05:59.180the question of equalization and I didn't think it would be successful because here we are in
00:06:04.140Alberta voting on what is essentially a federal spending program but I think the way the question
00:06:09.660has been designed is very clever I've had a chance to talk with Professor Ted Morton about it
00:06:14.260And because of various constitutional decisions that have gone through the courts in the past, my understanding is that by asking Albertans if they want to take a section out of the Constitution, it initiates a process that causes the federal government to have to take this seriously.
00:06:29.800And it starts the national discussion.
00:06:31.960I don't know that we'll be successful in getting equalization eliminated, but you know what?
00:06:36.720We may be successful in getting it reformed.
00:06:38.800All I know is if we vote no to this, we'll never even start the conversation.
00:06:41.600That's why I am encouraging everyone I know to vote strongly yes in favor of this, because I think we do need a strong mandate for the Premier to pursue it.
00:06:51.180Rob, you want to pick up on that? What will you say to the question in general?
00:06:55.320Well, I mean, I think that I think it's important and I will be voting yes, obviously,
00:07:03.880and we'll be encouraging everyone that is voting in the municipal election next Monday to tick a
00:07:12.120box by the yes column because obviously equalization is a disaster. It's a terrible policy.
00:07:18.840It specifically rewards poor government. It penalizes good governance. It penalizes provinces
00:07:30.440that are full of hardworking workers that are contributing to society and to the economy and
00:07:41.540so forth. It is literally one of the most ineffective and ridiculous programs that one
00:07:48.080could conceive of. And yet we've somehow have this beast enshrined in our constitution. So we need
00:07:54.080to vote yes on it. Now that said, though, I don't believe that whether we get 60% or 50% or 70%
00:08:04.760or whatever, is that important here. And for me, this is more of a symbolic question. I think there
00:08:10.500are more substantive things that Alberta can do to end equalization and federal transfer payments
00:08:16.720and so forth that go far beyond this question.
00:08:20.140But to Daniel's point, there are some legal reasons for doing this.
00:17:52.360it's actually troubling what you give us but it's good information and there are people listening
00:17:57.200out there i think that i think we should keep in mind we'll have a lot of uh political types like
00:18:02.520ourselves out watching our program here tonight and hopefully there's some people that aren't so
00:18:06.820political geeks like us and maybe not married to the coverage of this stuff every day and we can
00:18:12.920help them with some of this information and help make an informed division uh decision pardon me
00:18:18.280let's put the question back up on the screen james if we could one more time this is the
00:18:22.100question you're going to be asked on the ballot in the upcoming municipal election next Monday.
00:18:27.300It's October the 18th. I guess it's this Monday. Rob, you mentioned that the system is rigged.
00:18:33.000And I think from what Danielle and Bill said, they tend to agree. Do we have to focus on
00:18:40.180educating more Albertans to exactly how this works and how much better our province might run if
00:18:46.240this formula were straightened out? Very good point. I mean, obviously, this just deals with
00:18:51.560equalization formula itself and of course the when you hear these numbers such as alberta has
00:18:57.960transferred uh 600 billion dollars more in tax revenues to ottawa than it's received back from
00:19:03.720ottawa government's services over the past 60 years and we're talking about that number we're
00:19:08.760talking about not just the equalization formula but also just the federal transfer scheme whereby
00:19:13.400we all pay our taxes to ottawa and they just continually find more and more interesting ways
00:19:19.000to uh to take that the majority of those monies and and put them into uh into quebec and uh for
00:19:25.080various boat buying schemes and things like that so so it's a big it's a huge issue um i personally
00:19:31.960uh you know i think that albertans um understand that we're getting host they understand that we
00:19:39.160are getting the short end of the stick in confederation um in in a big way uh what i
00:19:45.400think is really alarming to them is that um you know there's i call it the tale of two trudeaus
00:19:52.040the first trudeau he he actually the national energy program people don't know this but it was
00:19:56.920actually it was actually the mission of it although it didn't really have the intended
00:20:01.560effect was to grow the energy industry for energy security in canada and to of course milk alberta
00:20:07.000for all it was worth uh while that was happening uh not a popular program had all kinds of
00:20:12.280unintended poor consequences but that's very different from the second trudeau justin trudeau
00:20:17.960whose stated goal is not just to suck us dry with with these continued equalization payments and
00:20:24.440and this law transfer program but it's also to actually phase out of existence our primary
00:20:31.960industry in the hundreds of thousands of jobs that that creates in this province and across canada
00:20:37.400So we're looking, so on that backdrop, I think it's important to note that, you know, this question is just, we're talking about one piece here.
00:20:49.420We're talking about kind of the sucking Alberta out of its resources dry piece.
00:20:55.920But what Albertans, I think, are starting to wake up to and what they should be waking up to now is the realization that we have a bit of an existential crisis on our hands.
00:21:03.480We are not going to be a fiscally viable province, a financially economically viable province, if we do not push back on the intention of the current government, which is to eliminate our most important industry and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that it creates.
00:21:19.960Danielle, does the question go far enough?
00:21:21.740Well, I think Rob is dead right. I mean, we need to go much further. We need to realize what the existential crisis is for Alberta, because I think we thought, well, after the NEP, we'll just keep our heads down and they'll allow us to keep on making money.
00:21:37.180They'll siphon some off. But as long as we're wealthy and we can take care of our stuff, it's all right.
00:21:42.480But as soon as they start attacking our principal industry, we have to ask where it ends.
00:21:46.300So we thought initially, OK, well, they're going after coal. Fine. We'll phase out coal and we'll adopt natural gas at our electricity power plants.
00:21:54.660And then it was, oh, well, now they're going after the oil sands. OK, well, let's figure out how we can do carbon capture on the oil sands.
00:22:00.360Well, now they're going after natural gas. And I don't think that we should be cavalier about what's happening in Quebec.
00:22:06.320They have passed a policy essentially making it impossible to extract any oil and gas resources from their province.
00:22:14.200And when you look at how much natural gas assets they have, and it's significant, the very idea that they would hamstring a sector of their economy and then turn around to the rest of the country and say, oh, by the way, we find ourselves a little bit short.
00:22:27.960Can you just transfer money from the rest of the country?
00:22:29.740is appalling, number one. But the second part is that if that is what they're going to do in Quebec,
00:22:34.880is pass policies that they can tell the world that the Glasgow COP26 conference is coming up
00:22:40.960in a couple of weeks' time, that this is the direction Canada is going, you better believe
00:22:45.300that Justin Trudeau is going to look at ways of putting pressure on other regions to cancel
00:22:50.400exploration and development permits as well. So Quebec has always led the country in this
00:22:55.960discussion. It's one of the reasons why we have such a huge divide between the public opinion in
00:23:01.180Alberta and Quebec. We fundamentally disagree on how we develop our energy resources, and they have
00:23:07.040always had the upper hand politically, they've had the upper hand financially, and now they're
00:23:11.280taking it one step further. So Rob is absolutely right. We need to push back. This is the first
00:23:15.480step, but there's so many more reasons why we have to make sure that this conversation
00:23:18.860advances from here. All right. You're watching Uncensored, a political panel that gets straight
00:23:25.460to the punch on western standard what i just heard from you danielle was a yes vote is absolutely
00:23:31.360necessary while it won't get us where we need to be it'll at least get us moving in the right
00:23:35.820direction bill would you concur yeah i uh i mean a lot of people fixate on the the constitutional
00:23:43.400side of this and you know uh i have a plan to hopefully get five provinces with 70 of the
00:23:52.000population on board with this because they're all paying into it and getting nothing. But there's
00:23:56.040no way we're getting seven provinces on board, given how much some of them are used to getting
00:24:01.160those no-strings-attached checks. But the point of it is just that when the Supreme Court was
00:24:08.980clear in 1998 that when one individual province expresses that they want to see constitutional
00:24:15.600change. The quote said, there's a corresponding duty on the participants to Confederation to
00:24:23.240engage in constitutional discussions in order to acknowledge and address democratic expressions of
00:24:28.360a desire for change. So to my mind, it's the key that, you know, they could have had an easier
00:24:33.520number or a higher result, probably if they just said, do you think equalization is unfair,
00:24:37.040but it wouldn't meet that threshold. Once we do meet that threshold, those negotiations can
00:24:42.640sort of put everything on the table including some of these other issues you know one of them
00:24:48.740is why did the federal government need to take so many tax dollars compared to the provinces
00:24:53.600why are provincial taxes half the size of our federal taxes that's just the way that the federal
00:24:59.740taxing power and the tax room that the federal government has means that the provinces all have
00:25:04.700to beg and plead to get the funding they need to provide their services when as a taxpayer i would
00:25:10.260much prefer, you know, be switched and have double my money going to the provincial government
00:25:15.500where health and education and the justice system and all the things that actually cost
00:25:19.260money are, compared to the federal government where they just use it to basically slush
00:25:24.160money around and follow political pursuits that are extra constitutional.
00:25:29.880Bill, I want to stay with this for a minute. You've been debating academics, frankly, on
00:25:34.600this issue for the last couple of months as we lead up to the vote the academic argument and
00:25:41.300some would say the liberal argument is that uh this question isn't right it's not going to get
00:25:46.720us where we need to be uh the emotional argument and the one that most albertans get when it's
00:25:53.700presented to them is that we need to go in this direction did you do anything you want to address
00:25:57.480that you're hearing from some of the critics uh on this debate they seem to be bending over
00:26:03.800backwards to be either uh purposely uh misleading folks or just being utterly obtuse because i feel
00:26:11.240like a lot of them it's not so much that they're they're partisan it's not their partisanship it's
00:26:15.560that they just don't trust uh people to get it uh they think they're afraid of people getting
00:26:22.120emotional and and acting on something without you know having a phd level uh of understanding on it
00:26:28.920and i'm you know i'm sorry but that's the world and and so i think this is important because i
00:26:33.640think albertans get it more than these guys give them credit for uh and so whether it's this you
00:26:39.080know some of them are niggling over this 1998 uh court ruling and pretending it was only about
00:26:44.200secession but the court was clear that there's a more general principle on this but who cares
00:26:48.920about the court it's just common sense that if a if a province has a vote like this to express
00:26:54.360dissatisfaction about something in the in the country you have to respect that and do something
00:27:00.200about it and you can't just sort of write it off as uh and utterly ignore it uh as you might be
00:27:05.480able to do with a politician who's of a different party that you don't like i'd love to hear an
00:27:10.360academic uh talk in plain language i should point out you are dr bill dr bill buick so we appreciate
00:27:18.120that rob you mentioned a little bit uh about um the premier's popularity possibly factoring into
00:27:25.160this vote we should address it i don't think there's a less popular premier in the province
00:27:30.440right now do you think that will impact albertans yes or no vote at the polls uh yes i think both
00:27:37.960directly and indirectly it'll it'll affect the vote so anyhow to bills dr maybe dr buick dr buick
00:27:48.120Bill's point earlier, you know, just a victory, just over 50% would be a victory.
00:27:54.780And the reason is, is because of the Premier's unpopularity.
00:27:58.580We don't need to get into the reasons for it.
00:28:00.340But, you know, I've seen polling ranging anywhere from 18 to 22% approval rating.
00:28:11.500Whether he can survive them, who knows.
00:28:12.900But the problem is, because he's so unpopular, it directly affects the vote in that some people, rightly or wrongly, are going to tie their view of this question and how to answer this question based on how they feel about the premier who's responsible for putting it on the ballot.
00:28:31.140day and if people aren't thinking and they're thinking emotionally about it they might want to
00:28:35.300try they might think that this is punishing uh him by by voting no on the issue well of course
00:28:40.500that's not punishing the premier it's punishing albertans so that's the direct way it affects it
00:28:45.540and then the indirect way is that he hasn't been able to advocate for it uh what what should be
00:28:51.460happening in a situation like this if you had if he had the popularity of a of a scott of a premier
00:28:56.820Moe or, you know, another one of the more popular premiers across the province right
00:29:01.740now, he would be out actively campaigning for a yes vote, but he can't because he knows
00:29:08.680as well as anybody else that by doing so, he actually harms the initiative.
00:29:13.340So we're kind of in a difficult bind here.
00:29:16.180And frankly, if we get, you know, say 50, 60, anything above 60% would be actually kind
00:29:22.700of a remarkable vote in favor of ending the program just because, frankly, we've kind of had
00:29:29.620one hand tied behind our back by having the most unpopular premier in the country.
00:29:36.960Danielle, is the premier's heart on this, you think?
00:29:39.860That's the question, isn't it? I think Rob's right. I think if he has strategists around him
00:29:45.180asking whether he would add value to the debate, most people would probably be saying,
00:29:49.360if you go out and actively campaign for this, you might end up creating the opposite result.
00:29:55.180So I want to assume that he does want the, he is engaged, he does want it to pass, he did put it
00:30:00.260on the ballot. Let me just put something out there that I'm surprised that I haven't heard
00:30:04.860more mayoral candidates mention this, because it does strike me that if you're going to make
00:30:10.020the argument that we shouldn't have equalization between the regions, it seems like a pretty
00:30:14.860powerful argument you could make if you're in Calgary or if you're in Edmonton or if you're in
00:30:19.500the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo. We've got a lot of equalization that happens in this
00:30:24.060province too. And this is, I guess, the nature of the problem is that municipalities are feeling
00:30:29.920resentful that this ballot question is out there, whereas I think municipal leaders should be
00:30:36.120looking at it as a way of starting a conversation about maybe we need to take this principle of
00:30:42.040allowing different regions to benefit from the revenues that are generated within their territory
00:30:48.120so that they can pay for their own services. We've got the same kind of strange tax and transfer game
00:30:52.680happening within our own province. So to me, having it on the municipal ballot is the exact
00:30:57.880right place for it. It could start a broader discussion. But sadly, we just haven't had very
00:31:02.540many champions for this at all. We've got the academics who are against it. We've got the
00:31:06.620municipal leaders sort of resentful that it's there. We've got at the municipal level, largely
00:31:11.660those who are employed at the municipal level of office the unions are the ones who tend to come
00:31:16.640out and vote and I don't I haven't heard very very much enthusiasm for it there so that's the only
00:31:22.660thing reason I'd be very concerned about the the lack of the premier's popularity and ability to
00:31:26.800weigh in on this because he should be the principal voice championing it and I think Rob's right that
00:31:32.200if he if he did end up taking a lead on it we might get the opposite result. Going to stay with
00:31:37.400you danielle before i do i just want a shameless plug for what we're doing here grateful that
00:31:42.340you're watching us tonight you're watching uncensored and it's a political panel with a
00:31:46.360punch we've decided to work with the western standard and uh talk about the things that
00:31:51.160matter to albertans and give you a platform and hopefully uh some common sense discussion on the
00:31:56.260issues that matter we're doing it tonight on the equalization referendum that's coming up on the
00:32:00.260municipal election ballot this coming Monday. Danielle, does Ottawa care? What happens?
00:32:08.240Well, they should, but I guess it doesn't do much good if you just saber rattle and you don't follow
00:32:13.960up with any meaningful action. And if they start a consultation with us, I think we have an idea
00:32:22.120of where that's going to end up. If you put it to a vote, seven out of 10 provinces representing
00:32:27.98050 percent of the population is i think the vote that you need to be able to change the constitution
00:32:32.540for the reasons bill and rob have suggested we might end up losing that one the only way we
00:32:36.940really can start taking our tax dollars back is by having our own alberta pension plan because we pay
00:32:43.420about 30 of the premiums but we only get back 10 of the benefits that are paid out if if we
00:32:50.380repatriated that program and we developed the investment principles around the values and
00:32:55.660principles that Albertans care about, they would pay attention to that. We already know they're
00:33:00.300paying attention to that because as we were beginning this discussion, the CPP Investment
00:33:05.540Board was doing advertisements out here saying, oh, your CPP Investment Board is doing a great
00:33:10.600job on your behalf. We also know that if we decided not to keep the RCMP and went with our
00:33:16.320own Alberta Provincial Police Force, that would also catch their attention. How do we know that?
00:33:20.480the RCMP union has already started taking out ads and doing campaigns to try to get Albertans
00:33:26.540persuaded not to go down that track. So I do think that there are other steps that need to
00:33:31.980be taken after this one that'll be more powerful, that will cause Ottawa to pay closer attention.
00:33:37.920But I don't think that they can because of the legal way in which this is structured. They can't
00:33:42.900ignore it, but they can override it. They can do political maneuvers to make it ineffectual,
00:33:47.620But there's other things that we can do in retaliation.
00:33:50.280Well, let's go to the lawyer in the group.
00:37:31.740Which they do all the time, from the carbon tax to different weapons legislation
00:37:37.520and restrictions to, you name it, the oil tanker.
00:37:40.740You can just go on and on, environmental regulations on our oil and gas sector.
00:37:45.340All of these things, which should be a provincial jurisdiction,
00:37:48.020all of these things are clearly not within the role of the federal government.
00:37:53.640And the passage of the Alberta Sovereignty Act would say,
00:37:55.920look, we are not going to enforce unconstitutional infringements of our provincial rights or attacks on Albertans within the boundaries of Alberta.
00:38:05.140So, for example, you can pass your carbon tax, fill your boots, but we're not going to enforce it here, period.
00:38:11.440And you can scream and yell all you want, but we're not enforcing it within our boundaries.
00:38:15.480And that's the type of action that I believe will get results long term on equalization, as well as on many of the issues that are that are hurting Alberta right now.
00:38:25.920All right. We could devote an entire program to the free Alberta strategy, and I think we probably will. Right now, let's kick it back to the debate on, or the discussion, pardon me, on the upcoming referendum on equalization. Bill, you didn't get a chance to weigh in on the last question I asked. Did you want to go there?
00:38:43.780yeah i i uh think there's equalization in particular is not an alberta problem it is a
00:38:52.440problem for uh like i said roughly 70 percent of the country pays a significant amount into it
00:38:59.660albertans pay probably about 650 dollars per person but if you go to ontario saskatchewan bc
00:39:06.420even Newfoundland, they pay about $500 per person. So it's $2,200 for a family of four in those
00:39:15.140provinces is going directly to fund provincial services in Quebec and the Maritimes. So I feel
00:39:21.740like we have an opportunity here. Ottawa might not want to listen to Alberta and they might be able
00:39:27.720to wave their hand about Alberta getting upset again. But if we can get people in Toronto or
00:39:34.680police people in the greater toronto area and all those target seats saying wait a second how come
00:39:39.560we aren't getting more of our tax dollars back to pay for our provincial services in metro vancouver
00:39:45.880saying the same thing uh that is something no party in ottawa can ignore and so what we're
00:39:51.560trying to do at fairness alberta and i encourage everybody to go uh to go see our equalization
00:39:56.840referendum.ca website to see we have a section right there to bc and ontario people that might
00:40:02.920be paying attention to this. This is an opportunity to get a ball rolling from which you guys can
00:40:09.160benefit a great deal as well and once you got 70% of the country with all those target seats in
00:40:14.920those places, Ottawa will have to pay attention and that's what we're focused on in the short term.
00:40:19.400Bill, we've discussed this before and I've challenged you on it and I'll
00:40:23.160do it again and I know you've got a good answer but it's tough to sell the emotion of this in
00:40:28.600other provinces do you find that or are you are you getting a good response i've i you know i
00:40:36.280it's no it is albertans uh tend to be more uh conditioned i would say to to expect uh unfair
00:40:45.720treatment from ottawa i think it's going to take a little bit more work in in british columbia and
00:40:51.720ontario to get them thinking the same way but but this country to me has a great deal of potential
00:40:57.960if we can just stop thinking about it as a sort of a giant welfare experiment and everybody's
00:41:04.280just here to hold each other when the times are tough uh when this country was founded for two
00:41:09.880reasons one was mutual defense against the united states because they have the biggest standing
00:41:14.680army in the world and we're starting to look for something to do and the second one was to have
00:41:19.320strong economic partnerships so that we could freely trade and cut down all these tariff walls
00:41:25.240that were preventing us from all of us from making the most of our economies and achieving
00:41:31.160our potential and so if we can get canada thinking again as a place where we are striving to be the
00:41:36.760best and the most productive and the freest place in the world i think that can make a huge
00:41:42.120difference and the key to that in my mind is get ontario to stop thinking of quebec as the big
00:41:47.240political issue in in uh in canada and start seeing that bc and alberta have just as many
00:41:53.880people and a much bigger economy than quebec does and it's building a bridge from ontario which is
00:41:59.800a productive uh have province that pays in as well getting that bridge and that mentality from the0.99
00:42:05.240ottawa river kind of being something to just kind of turn away from and look for the potential in
00:42:11.320the western part of the country and if ontarians can understand that we can all be stronger
00:42:15.560including the eastern part of the country by having all of our economies firing on all cylinders and
00:42:20.840ending some of this dependency, to me, that's the recipe for long-term success in Canada.
00:42:27.080We've covered a lot of ground. We've got some time left. Danielle, I want to go back to you
00:42:31.400with kind of an open-ended question. You're just joining in the debate or discussion here tonight.
00:42:36.280People recognize we're talking about the upcoming equalization referendum.
00:42:40.840What do we need to know ahead of Monday? Well, there's a couple of things that I just find
00:42:46.440outrageous that really persuaded me that equalization needs to be eliminated and one of
00:42:53.000them is i think bill alluded to it earlier quebec receives 13 billion dollars out of this fund and
00:43:00.840it's a total of 21 billion dollars and newfoundland and labrador doesn't qualify for any equalization
00:43:06.200transfer now think about that and what we've seen over the last year and a half newfoundland labrador
00:43:10.120is on the brink of bankruptcy they're not able to support their own programming but we're basing
00:43:15.800their allocation this year based on previous year's levels of wealth. Meanwhile, Quebec keeps
00:43:20.620bragging that they have balanced budgets and surpluses and putting money away into their
00:43:25.300prosperity fund and paying down debt, offering subsidized daycare, subsidized post-secondary.
00:43:32.840And you have to look at that and you say, how can that be? How can we create a program that is so
00:43:37.560biased in favor of Quebec and so imbalanced against clearly a nation or a jurisdiction
00:43:46.280that's in need like Newfoundland and Labrador. And that I think is the fundamental unfairness.
00:43:50.040So when we're talking about equalization, I think what we're talking about is rebalancing the
00:43:54.600discussion so that the entire program isn't geared towards Quebec. I think we have to be
00:43:58.920honest about that because if we were, I mean, I must tell you, I don't get too bent out of shape
00:44:04.440by thinking that we might need to top up Prince Edward Island because they're a very small
00:44:09.460island jurisdiction, what, 150,000 people? They may have a higher cost of service. It may make
00:44:14.600sense to give them a bit more of a transfer so they can have roughly equal programs with roughly
00:44:20.260equal tax rates. But Quebec should have never been able to qualify for this program. We never
00:44:25.440should have had a program that causes tiny jurisdictions like Newfoundland and Labrador0.88
00:44:30.260and Saskatchewan to be paying for platinum level services in Quebec. And that's what it comes down
00:44:36.020to for me, is that we may end up with some kind of top up for some of the other regions, the smaller
00:44:41.000regions on a conditional basis or temporary basis, but this permanent transfer of dollars to Quebec
00:44:48.000as they find ways to crater their own economy by either not developing their own natural resources
00:44:53.920and creating a new revenue stream, or by subsidizing their electricity rate so that
00:44:59.340They're not getting an appropriate dividend.
00:45:18.580We've got large populations capable of taking care of ourselves, capable of having the economies of scale necessary in our tax base and so forth to build the hospitals that we need.
00:45:29.340and employ the people that we need there's no reason these four provinces should ever receive
00:45:34.780equalization saskatchewan manitoba perhaps a little nova scotia perhaps a little bit of
00:45:40.460equalization would be warranted there in uh in lean times but not a lot and then it should be
00:45:45.980reserved as daniel said for the very smallest uh populations where economies of scale just
00:45:51.420in the tax base just do not make it possible to provide proper health care and and education and
00:45:57.020and so forth so we're talking about a 21 billion program 21 billion dollar program it should
00:46:02.060probably be about two billion dollars that's what it should probably cost and it should go primarily
00:46:07.260to two or three provinces in the highest need uh if any depending on how on how things are
00:46:13.860that year in that province but it has turned into a giant vote buying scheme by sucking dollars out
00:46:20.580of Alberta, redistributing them into Montreal, Quebec, and the Maritimes as well, all for
00:46:29.200the purpose of electing Liberal government.
00:50:44.820But to be able to win votes in that greater Toronto area,
00:50:48.240you have to demonstrate that you can win votes in Quebec.
00:50:50.680Maybe it just goes back to the idea that Ontario, maybe they feel like they've got to be the healer of the nation or something and keep everyone together.
00:50:59.700But that's why I don't think a political party can win by writing off Quebec completely, even though, as Bill points out, the math works.
00:51:06.980I think the bigger issue that we have to get to is when you look at all of the different transfers that we have in provincial areas, we've got the Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer, and equalization.
00:51:18.960I just looked up these numbers on the weekend. It's over 83 billion dollars that the federal
00:51:24.440government launders. They take it from the provinces. They take their cut through the
00:51:28.980federal bureaucracy. They divvy it up. At least the Canada Health and Social Transfers are done1.00
00:51:35.160on a per capita basis. But the reason why everybody keeps dancing to Ottawa's tune is because of the
00:51:40.480unfairness of equalization. Now, my favorite approach would be just take that 83 billion
00:51:47.120dollars and turn it all into a single transfer on a per capita basis. And the reason you'd want to
00:51:54.440do that is pretty soon you'd have the provinces start saying, hmm, why is Ottawa taking this money
00:51:59.980in the first place? If they want to have meaningful decisions on health care and long-term care and
00:52:06.620daycare, why don't they run for provincial office? Why do federal politicians run for federal office
00:52:13.300knowing that it's actually a fairly limited role, and then take money from the provinces so that
00:52:19.500they can have some way of influencing policy. That's the thing that I object to. But I don't
00:52:24.480think we get to that conversation without eliminating equalization first, because look
00:52:28.880what's already happening. We already have the provinces lining up to say, how can we get more
00:52:33.300money from Ottawa and health transfers? I would far rather for our provinces to say, stop taking
00:52:39.540it in the first place. Let's convert all of those transfers into a change in tax points. Let's get
00:52:44.760rid of equalization as it stands, give tiny top ups to those provinces that need it on a different
00:52:49.640type of basis. And then let's start taking care of our own business. But I don't think that you
00:52:53.680can have that conversation until you deal with the equalization problem. Well, you may have
00:52:59.360effectively wrapped for us, Daniel, but I'd like to give everybody a chance, maybe 60 seconds or so,
00:53:05.520to kind of throw their thoughts together, wrap this up.
00:53:09.320And again, to those of you at home, thank you for being with us.
00:53:11.760This is our inaugural edition here on the Western Standard of Uncensored,
00:53:15.640and we're going to straight talk on some of the things that matter to Albertans and Canadians.