You can see here that each individual in Alberta effectively pays about 8 times more than each Ontario person to other poor provinces.
Posted on 10/31/2005 8:45:57 PM PST by NZerFromHK
There seems to be some misunderstanding about where Ralph got the surplus cash he's handing out to Albertans
My 16-year-old daughter tends not to pay much attention to the front page of the newspaper, usually flipping to the latest news on Brad and Angelina or to Dilbert's daily dose of cubicle irony. This pattern was interrupted the other day, however, when Alice accosted me at the coffee maker, waving a copy of the liberal Edmonton Journal, whose headline read, and I paraphase, "Klein Announces Prosperity Bonuses (the Dork)." "When," she demanded, "do I get my $400?"
Now, mornings are not a good time for me. If everything doesn't go just so first thing, I tend to become uncharacteristically cranky. I don't believe I'm alone in this affliction and I have a theory that had Marina not burned Lee Harvey's eggs on that November morning in Dallas, he'd not have moseyed over to the book repository and Jackie would not have had to marry that awful Greek. I call this the Burnt Egg Theory and await Oliver Stone's call.
So the morning part of me was urging, as a response to my daughter: "Get back in the cellar and polish the drains, ungrateful cur!" Instead, I grunted something about the money going to the "household"; she snarled something about the $400 being "mine"; I responded by explaining that the cheque would no doubt be made out to me and go straight into my bank account; she told me to shut up; I told her to watch her mouth; she stuck her tongue out; I poured my coffee; blessed silence reigned.
Premier Ralph Klein's announcement the previous day in Cold Lake, Alta., where the Conservative caucus had been holed up in one of its periodic Listen-to-Ralph confabs, had come as something of a surprise even to the provincial Finance Ministry. What kind of craziness was this?
The idea of dipping into the surplus to the tune of $1.4 billion and distributing it amongst every Albertan is certainly not new. Back in 1957 and 1958, then premier Ernest Manning handed out a third of oil revenues in petro-bucks under the somewhat flawed Oil and Gas Royalties Dividend Act, which allotted around $20 to each of Alberta's 550,000 residents. Alaska used surpluses from Prudhoe Bay oil to create the Alaska Permanent Fund in 1968. That fund now pays annual dividends of about US$2,000 to each of Alaska's 600,000 citizens.
Even Ralph's been there before. In 2001, in preparation for that year's March election, he mailed rebate cheques to natural gas consumers. This practice became the Natural Gas Rebate Program, just entering its third and final winter, whereby consumers are rebated between $1.50 and $3.35 on each gigajoule of natural gas they buy that costs them more than $5.50 between October and March.
This policy, which will "cost" the government around $115 million a month this winter if the price of gas runs above $9 per GJ, seems a reasonable one. In a province that receives 70 per cent of its resource royalties from natural gas, the $3.50 per GJ difference between the kick-in price and the $9 means an extra $288 million in monthly royalties to our Croesian government--more than twice the amount of the rebate.
And family breakfast squabbles notwithstanding, the $400-per-citizen Prosperity Bonus that Klein announced in September is just as reasonable. It's a means of channelling back some of the (expected) $8.8-billion surplus for 2005-06 to the people who own the resources (i.e., us). After all, we Albertans pay the provincial government 10 per cent of our income in personal taxes to perform various services--including the collection of royalties on our resources--on our behalf.
If we overpay, we expect a rebate. For a government--like the federal one--to use the overpayment for its own purposes is tantamount to one's lawyer using one's family trust to bankroll his Las Vegas expenses. I believe the legal term for this is embezzlement. Yet for some reason, when the Liberals in Ottawa dip into the surplus to improve their electoral chances in Quebec, or when the Klein government shovels our money in the direction of doctors, nurses and teachers for similar ends, it's called "politics"--and nobody goes to jail. Is it any wonder the bulk of the electorate is cynical about the political process?
Ralph's prosperity bonuses, by comparison, are a breath of clean air--like the clerk in the Mac's store giving you $6 change on the $10 bill you gave him for a jug of milk (okay, maybe it's more like getting $2 worth of change, but it's a start). However, from the reaction of the chattering castes at the Edmonton Journal and the other Ralph-is-a-Dork circles, you'd think the government was behaving recklessly and fecklessly.
The Journal (which is sometimes unkindly known as the "Urinal") has led the charge in condemning the prosperity bonuses. Columnists and editorialists have questioned the mechanics of distributing the cash. (What about the homeless? Long-term Albertans who have recently retired in Victoria? Unborn babies?) They opine that the rebates will only further enrage the envious citizens of the have-not provinces. They accuse Ralph of politicking his way to a favourable leadership vote at the spring convention. Their redistributionist ideals have been offended by the prospect of cheques being given to the rich. Their belief in big, complex, multi-fingered government has been wounded by the simplicity of rebates. More than anything else, they are horrified at the government abnegating its paternal role in spending our money for us. All are convinced that they know of much better ways to spend the rebate money than the means chosen by the Dorkistas.
Columnist Paula Simons, former CBC-er, feminist apologist, and champion of gay Canada Council recipients, wrote:
That $1.4 billion could have funded 16 kilometres of LRT construction. Or paid for three major waste water treatment plants. Or built 20 big "multi-purpose" recreational facilities all around the province, the kinds with pools and rinks and indoor gyms. Looked at another way, $1.4 billion is about what it would cost to repair and retrofit 50 mature urban neighbourhoods, to fix their roads and sidewalks and sewer systems.
Columnist Todd Babiak, another young hero to south Edmonton's hoary artistic set, wrote:
Personally, I would prefer it if the provincial government were to invest my $300 in the new Edmonton Art Gallery, which needs a meagre $40 or $50 million to transform downtown. Or how about research--medical research, technological research, environmental research--that will further diversify the economy and benefit people here and in Toronto and Bangladesh?
Even the Canada West Foundation, which I'd assumed to be a voice of pragmatism and perhaps even small government, took up the paternalistic banner. Wrote research director Robert Roach:
For each of us to get our share right away and in the form of a cheque, we have to water down what we can do with the collective pot of money. We could, for example, use it to help turn the University of Alberta into a school on par with Harvard. Or we could target its redistribution so that it really means something to less fortunate Albertans, rather than see millionaires get cheques for a few hundred dollars that they don't need.
It's obvious everyone has his own catalogue of uses for what should be done with the $1.4 billion. But let's not forget, that money represents less than a quarter of what the eventual surplus will likely be. The other three quarters is already being channelled into various collectivist pots, including capital projects, endowment funds for the environment, rural development and the social sciences, and even the good old Heritage Fund.
Let's also not forget that, as Ralph pointed out, recipients of the $400 cheques can spend it any way they like. They can take a trip to Vegas, they can give the money to charity, or, as one letter writer to the Journal proposed, they can donate it to the NDP.
An MLA present at the Cold Lake caucus meeting where the idea was presented, called the rebate plan "retail politics at its most basic," and said he thought the idea "a stroke of genius." Perhaps he's right in the sense that it perfectly embodies the instincts and aspirations of the conservative Alberta some of us had feared might have fallen under the onslaught of in-flocking eastern Liberals.
As my impertinent daughter pointed out, this money is "mine." Well, not hers necessarily, but certainly her daddy the taxpayer's. For I am receiving the change that is owed me; I am being given the freedom to spend my own money as frivolously or as nobly as I choose.
Four hundred bucks may not be a lot for most of us. Considering the size of the surplus, it's certainly not enough. But it's a start and it's a symbol. It tells us that we are still Albertans, and what's ours is ours to do with as our hearts desire. And yee-haw to that.
She should have smacked her.
Drek!.................FRegards
Well, he raised quite a fine spoiled brat, didn't he?....hope he enjoys the next 4 years...
You can see here that each individual in Alberta effectively pays about 8 times more than each Ontario person to other poor provinces.
The notion that taxes (the people's money) belong to them instead of the State is generally a foreign notion to most Canadians -especially in central Canada. Alberta is generally a lone exception.
And then he comitts the cardinal sin of trying to reason with his nascent socialist without using any actual logic or reason. He just mentions vague concepts about the money going back to the "household".
The conversation should have gone something like this:
Daughter: "When do I get my $400?"
Daddy: "When you start paying taxes."
Simple, to the point, and completely correct.
Quebec will never leave (they'd lose their place at the federal tax trough).
What Canada really needs to worry about is Alberta seceding.
I got three words...READ THE TAGLINE!
Albertans are about as un-socialist as Canadians go. Politically they are also much more conservative than Canadians.
This is the reason Alberta's people are referred to as "the fifth columns of the United States" in Ontario and Quebec. They are cariatured as having busts of George W. Bush at home and have hidden flagpoles somewhere at home to hoist a Stars and Stripes in secret.
I realize that, but they are still a part of a socialist country, which is why they continually get raped by the Feds, as it were. Someday, Atlas might just shrug.
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It wasn’t just what the bumper sticker said, but where it was placed and what it was stuck on. The white rectangle that read, "One hundred years is long enough," followed by the website address, www.separationalberta.com, was high up in the rear window of a shiny new, high-end SUV driving through supposedly Liberal downtown Edmonton-- not on a dusty old pickup truck in a small prairie town. And at the wheel was a smartly-dressed soccer mom, her two kids seated behind her, though obscured by the tinted side windows. These days, western independence has a new face. A movement that was once restricted to what central Canadians might call the redneck fringe, has managed to spread to westerners who are, in many cases, urbane, white collar and increasingly too young to be nursing any grudges over the National Energy Program. What’s more, sympathy for breaking up the country along east-west lines is no longer strictly something you’ll find in Alberta. More than ever, support for separation is growing all across the West.
That’s the conclusion of a Western Standard poll, which found that a record number of people in all four western provinces say they are willing to look at separating from the East. According to the poll, which was conducted in July, using random selection methods, 35.6 per cent of westerners agreed with the statement: "Western Canadians should begin to explore the idea of forming their own country." How serious is that? In Quebec, measures of separatist sentiment often find about 37 per cent of Quebecers endorsing independence (though, at times, the numbers have risen as high as 55 per cent, as was the case with a poll conducted by the newspaper La Presse in July)
The research, which was conducted by pollster Faron Ellis, a political science professor at the Lethbridge Community College, was commissioned by the Western Standard to determine how well the federal government under Prime Minister Paul Martin has been managing the issue of western alienation--something that Martin promised to reduce as part of his 2004 election campaign. It demonstrates the highest support level for separation ever recorded in any province. Historically, separatist sentiment has been estimated in Alberta to hover in the single digits. In fact, 42 per cent of Albertans now say they are willing to consider the idea of forming a new nation, independent of Ottawa. In Saskatchewan, 31.9 per cent expressed a willingness. Residents of B.C. and Manitoba were the least likely to say they would consider separation, but significant numbers in both provinces nevertheless expressed sympathy with the separatist cause: 30.8 per cent and 27.5 per cent, respectively. The poll was conducted around Canada Day, between June 29 and July 5, 2005, when sentiment for federation should have been running at its peak. It sampled 1,448 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
(Source: A nation torn apart, Kevin Steel, Western Standard, August 22, 2005
Interestingly enough Edmonton is considered as the most left-leaning and pro-federalist place anywhere in Alberta. But on a comparative scale it is still way to the right of Ontario's cities.
Maybe we should invite them to join the USA. The Canadians could have Vermont in exchange.
Alberta, we'd love to have ya! Our kind of folks and it would keep our hockey rivalries "in-house".
All new members of parliament need to make an oath like this:
I, (the name), do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God.
Hehehe...
Daughter: "When do I get my $400?"
Daddy: "When you start paying taxes."
Simple, to the point, and completely correct."
Don't forget that she IS paying taxes--anything she buys is already taxed heavily. I'm not disagreeing with your contention she should have been told to shut her yap, but I would have used this line instead:
"When you start paying my property tax bill and for my food and for my mortgage payment and for my insurance and for the various extras in my life...then I'll consider giving you a cut of any tax rebate cheques made out to me. Until then, go pound sand and wait for your inheritance, if I decide to leave you one after that greedy little remark--and if the Queen doesn't tax it right out of my hands anyway."
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