Alberta Separatism is starting to go mainstream

[freshprince1]

Yah, but if we save $12B/year by not paying equalization....theoretically we could do the same and more? That's just the financial portion of it, and granted there's likely more to it than that. Just playing devil's advocate.

[dirtsniffer]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

So pondering this over lunch. I think this whole Wexit thing is going to hurt Alberta way more than people realize.

At the end of 2018 Sohi announced 1.6 billion from the feds to help the oil and gas industry get to new markets.

- 1 billion available to exporters of all size to help companies invest in new technology
- 500 million for energy diversification financing program for 'higher risk' oil and gas companies dealing with the market uncertainty
- 50 million through natural resources canada clean growth program
- 100 million through innovation, science and economi development canada

Thats on top of buying TMX pipeline itself which was going to be cancelled.

And in the end the liberals got 0 seats for all that but also being publicly attacked for it and now the #wexit movement throwing a tantrum. It all just screams there's no point paying attention to Alberta because they aren't going to ever vote for a left of center party.

Last time I looked into it AB receives back 50 cents for every dollar we send to Ottawa. These amounts won't change anything.

[pheoxs]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Yah, but if we save $12B/year by not paying equalization....theoretically we could do the same and more? That's just the financial portion of it, and granted there's likely more to it than that. Just playing devil's advocate.

FFS we don’t pay 12 billion in equalization or anywhere close to that.

Alberta contributed 2.2 billion from our tax revenue to the program. That’s it. Scrap equalization and we still don’t have a balanced budget.

[Buster]

equalization payments are a drop in the bucket compared to the opportunity cost that results from sharing a regulatory environment with Quebec, Ontario, and BC (and FN).

[89coupe]

Thought this was rather uncanny

[ZenOps]

The US desperately wants Alberta because it has of course oil, but also enough freshwater runoff from the mountains to keep several cities going without having to resort to groundwater pumping (arsenic) Saltwater desalination (expensive to maintain, and can only be used along coasts) or the most dire El Paso solution (direct recycling of sewage to treated for drinking).

Do not be fooled, the USA will at times hire brainwashers to try and attain Alberta without paying a dime for it, when they should be offering at least several Trillion. Greenland is without doubt worth at least a Trillion. If the USA seriously wants Alberta, show me the money first.

[rage2]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

FFS we don’t pay 12 billion in equalization or anywhere close to that.

Alberta contributed 2.2 billion from our tax revenue to the program. That’s it. Scrap equalization and we still don’t have a balanced budget.

Equalization isn't a program that we contribute to. It's just a transfer payment scheme from general revenue that we contribute to, so it's impossible to say how much we paid into the program, but we can see how much we get out of that particular program (it's $0). Just curious where you got your numbers from? Even if you look at just federal income tax contributions in Alberta (which is like 10% of revenue) it's $5b. If you're not looking at specifically "equalization payments" and look at the gap between what we send and what we receive, basically what would happen if we separate and nothing else changes, that number is just under $20b last year, in our current economic climate. At it's peak it was in the $25b range. There's certainly an argument that we can balance our books if we have that much more revenue to play with.

I'm not for separation, but gotta get your numbers right.

[pheoxs]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Equalization isn't a program that we contribute to. It's just a transfer payment scheme from general revenue that we contribute to, so it's impossible to say how much we paid into the program, but we can see how much we get out of that particular program (it's $0). Just curious where you got your numbers from? Even if you look at just federal income tax contributions in Alberta (which is like 10% of revenue) it's $5b. If you're not looking at specifically "equalization payments" and look at the gap between what we send and what we receive, basically what would happen if we separate and nothing else changes, that number is just under $20b last year, in our current economic climate. At it's peak it was in the $25b range. There's certainly an argument that we can balance our books if we have that much more revenue to play with.

I'm not for separation, but gotta get your numbers right.

You are right that we don't directly contribute to equalization but it does come from general tax revenue which includes our portion. The program had 19 billion $ last year dispersed and we have a population of 37.6 million in Canada. So I roughly figured that works out to 500$ per person times our population of 4.2 million gave ~2.1 billion. Probably on the low side since we have higher than average incomes. Looking further since you mentioned it this article says we contributed 28.1 billion over the previous 10 year period so thats relatively close for a rough estimate.

The point I was trying to get across is we don't pay for Quebecs 11 billion in equalization or anywhere even close to that. But I see people parroting that number and was trying to provide a closer number (albeit still a rough estimate)

As for what we send to the federal government vs get back, we wouldn't magically get 20B left in our budget. If we separated (which won't happened) we would have to pick up a lot of services that the federal government runs at the moment.

Edit: Here's a cleaner list of what we would need. That 20 billion would disappear instantly as our province tries to run its own services because nothing they do is on budget.

- Central bank (That wouldn't be able to print money because we'd be stuck with CAD or USD niether of which we control)
- Immigrations, customs, visas, border security
- Military
- RCMP - Federal pays 30% at the moment
- Postal Service plus customs
- Infastructure funding (federal portion)
- International affairs / UN ambassador
- Embassy
- Senate or some type of oversight to the provincial assembly
- If Wexit happens then we'd need some kind of new federal system because Alberta has nearly twice the population as Sask/Manitoba so AB would have all of the power
- Funding for agriculture partnership that is currently federally subsidized
- EI / CPP replacement that would start with 0 funding initially

[dirtsniffer]

https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebs...ations/201701E

As rage2 mentioned, Alberta sends about $20 billion to Ottawa every year that we never see again. Alberta has the lowest federal per capita spending out of all the provinces. If the feds want to start improving things here they need to start sending billions in additional funding back west.

[Buster]

Between 2007 and 2015, Alberta contributed $221 billion more to Federal coffers than it received in Federal funding and services, net of CPP payments/contributions.

By the way: per capita federal income tax receipts in Alberta are about double the rest of Canada.

The rest of the public service would be annoying to set up, and take some time and investment. But Canadian provinces already have significant public service infrastructure in place. You wouldn' tbe starting from zero. It's not a barrier, and certainly not a reason to stay with Confederation.

[Ca_Silvia13]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

You are right that we don't directly contribute to equalization but it does come from general tax revenue which includes our portion. The program had 19 billion $ last year dispersed and we have a population of 37.6 million in Canada. So I roughly figured that works out to 500$ per person times our population of 4.2 million gave ~2.1 billion. Probably on the low side since we have higher than average incomes. Looking further since you mentioned it this article says we contributed 28.1 billion over the previous 10 year period so thats relatively close for a rough estimate.

The point I was trying to get across is we don't pay for Quebecs 11 billion in equalization or anywhere even close to that. But I see people parroting that number and was trying to provide a closer number (albeit still a rough estimate)

As for what we send to the federal government vs get back, we wouldn't magically get 20B left in our budget. If we separated (which won't happened) we would have to pick up a lot of services that the federal government runs at the moment.

Edit: Here's a cleaner list of what we would need. That 20 billion would disappear instantly as our province tries to run its own services because nothing they do is on budget.

- Central bank (That wouldn't be able to print money because we'd be stuck with CAD or USD niether of which we control)
- Immigrations, customs, visas, border security
- Military
- RCMP - Federal pays 30% at the moment
- Postal Service plus customs
- Infastructure funding (federal portion)
- International affairs / UN ambassador
- Embassy
- Senate or some type of oversight to the provincial assembly
- If Wexit happens then we'd need some kind of new federal system because Alberta has nearly twice the population as Sask/Manitoba so AB would have all of the power
- Funding for agriculture partnership that is currently federally subsidized
- EI / CPP replacement that would start with 0 funding initially

The separated state would also get hit with the respective amounts of the Canadian Debt load. I haven't heard one rational, thought through example where this makes any sense to do for Alberta. Minority governments don't last long in comparison to majority governments so it's not worth separating when in 2 years we are back at the polls. Hopefully with a better run Conservative campaign, they left to many cards on the table this time around.

[Zhariak]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

The separated state would also get hit with the respective amounts of the Canadian Debt load. I haven't heard one rational, thought through example where this makes any sense to do for Alberta. Minority governments don't last long in comparison to majority governments so it's not worth separating when in 2 years we are back at the polls. Hopefully with a better run Conservative campaign, they left to many cards on the table this time around.

Of course we'd have to take our percentage of the debt load, but that could be easily repaid in a short amount of time.

Essentially, we'd be:

-No longer contributing towards equalization, we'd be keeping the funds.
-Corporate federal taxes would be redirected towards the new government.
-Corporate provincial taxes would be redirected towards the new government. (this is what the province receives at the moment)
-Personal Federal taxes would be redirected towards the new government.
-Personal provincial taxes would be redirected towards the new government. (this is what the province receives at the moment).
-Other forms of taxation (such as royalties, duties, import/export fees, etc.) would be redirected towards the new government


A lot of people think it's just equalization we send, but it's not. There's a whole ton of revenue we send to the feds. Not only would we be keeping the our portion of equalization contributions, but we'd also be keeping the amounts of personal and corporate federal taxes and other revenue that we send to the government of Canada right now. All of this adds up to a sh*t ton of money.

If this was done correctly, and if we could get other provinces on board (while we don't need to), this could turn in to something huge, and work out very favorably for the citizens.

[Buster]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

The separated state would also get hit with the respective amounts of the Canadian Debt load. I haven't heard one rational, thought through example where this makes any sense to do for Alberta. Minority governments don't last long in comparison to majority governments so it's not worth separating when in 2 years we are back at the polls. Hopefully with a better run Conservative campaign, they left to many cards on the table this time around.

Albertans owe that money right now, so the per capita debt of an Albertan (provincial+federal) would stay basically the same.

One of the big benefits of separation is distancing ourselves from the per capita provincial debt of the big provinces. Do you think the Feds would let Ontario default on its debt? Ontario's provincial level debt is a serious risk for Alberta.

[rage2]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

You are right that we don't directly contribute to equalization but it does come from general tax revenue which includes our portion. The program had 19 billion $ last year dispersed and we have a population of 37.6 million in Canada. So I roughly figured that works out to 500$ per person times our population of 4.2 million gave ~2.1 billion. Probably on the low side since we have higher than average incomes. Looking further since you mentioned it this article says we contributed 28.1 billion over the previous 10 year period so thats relatively close for a rough estimate.

The point I was trying to get across is we don't pay for Quebecs 11 billion in equalization or anywhere even close to that. But I see people parroting that number and was trying to provide a closer number (albeit still a rough estimate)

Again, people need to stop talking about equalization. Like Buster says, it's a drop in the bucket. It's a $20b a year fund from total revenue that gets dispersed (with Quebec getting the most of it). There is no way to tell how much each province contributes to this one specific program. The article you quoted is just lazy journalism, and references this:

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...federation.pdf

If you take the entire quote into context, it basically says the same thing, and tries to derive what Alberta's share might look like based on an arbitrary metric:

While Albertans have received no direct benefits from the equalization program, they have contributed disproportionately to the federal revenue that funds it by virtue of higher income levels and, therefore, higher federal tax payments per person. For example, in 2014, 17.8 percent of all federal revenue came from Alberta, a far greater share than the province’s 11 percent share of the national population. This means that of the $158.3 billion paid out in equalization payments from 2008/09 to 2017/18, approximately $28.1 billion came from Alberta.

There are a lot of metrics that you can use to make your own narrative. Compare it with total provincial contribution, the narrative would show Quebec and Alberta paying the same. Pull out per capita contribution numbers, and Alberta would be paying the whole thing. It's a pointless exercise.

The key to the numbers is how much we pay, and how much we get back. We pay $50b a year to Canada, so the separatist question that is asked should be can we provide everything you've pointed out for $50b a year to serve our 4m residents? Not $20b, which is just the gap.

[Buster]

I think one major tipping point in the separation discussion is when we get out the crayons and explain to the public service unions and their members what it would look like to have Alberta and its government retain $20 billion a year extra within the province. You want class sizes to be half? Done. You want better funded police/fire? Done. You want a bunch of pencil pushers getting jobs in Edmonton to run whatever customs/regulatory/BS stuff government stuffed shirts do? Done.

[Ca_Silvia13]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Albertans owe that money right now, so the per capita debt of an Albertan (provincial+federal) would stay basically the same.

One of the big benefits of separation is distancing ourselves from the per capita provincial debt of the big provinces. Do you think the Feds would let Ontario default on its debt? Ontario's provincial level debt is a serious risk for Alberta.

No but my concern is if AB separated the debt gets called in to be paid. So the start up years create massive AB debts for the first few years. How does that effect personal and corporate tax levels? Separate and pay 50% tax? Hope in the following years the taxes drop. Ya right.

[dirtsniffer]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

The separated state would also get hit with the respective amounts of the Canadian Debt load. I haven't heard one rational, thought through example where this makes any sense to do for Alberta. Minority governments don't last long in comparison to majority governments so it's not worth separating when in 2 years we are back at the polls. Hopefully with a better run Conservative campaign, they left to many cards on the table this time around.

Currently, Albertan's pay way more than average on a per capita basis. Right now, we are paying our share of the debt and a lot extra based on other provinces being broke. If we took our share of the debt based on population, wouldn't it decrease the amount of debt we are paying?

[Ca_Silvia13]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Currently, Albertan's pay way more than average on a per capita basis. Right now, we are paying our share of the debt and a lot extra based on other provinces being broke. If we took our share of the debt based on population, wouldn't it decrease the amount of debt we are paying?

I think the debt is the same because it would be calculated per person. I just keep circling back to start-up costs and Canadian Federal services such as National Parks, FN treaties, RCMP. Some are easier to deal with like RCMP (either pay them or get rid of them). National Parks would more then likely be recognized and Grandfathered. But how in the hell do we deal with the FN in the province? Leave it up to Ottawa to deal with and we take a hand off approach? That doesn't appear to be a great solution.

[JRSC00LUDE]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I think one major tipping point in the separation discussion is when we get out the crayons and explain to the public service unions and their members what it would look like to have Alberta and its government retain $20 billion a year extra within the province. You want class sizes to be half? Done. You want better funded police/fire? Done. You want a bunch of pencil pushers getting jobs in Edmonton to run whatever customs/regulatory/BS stuff government stuffed shirts do? Done.

If you build a new identity based on pandering to Unions you're already on the road to bankruptcy.

[Buster]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

No but my concern is if AB separated the debt gets called in to be paid. So the start up years create massive AB debts for the first few years. How does that effect personal and corporate tax levels? Separate and pay 50% tax? Hope in the following years the taxes drop. Ya right.

There's a bunch of ways to transition debt obligations. None of them are as hard as you think. At its simplest, Alberta issues bonds to cover the debt. The market decides what the rate is based on risk and other factors like debt to GDP ratio, etc. But the bond market would actually determine the cost of borrowing for Alberta by pricing its bonds. Alberta pays a slight premium over Canada when it comes to rate - mostly because sovereign nation governments have more powers of taxation than sub-national governments usually do.

But basically Alberta would bring debt onto the provincial balance sheet, but the provincial GDP would now be unencumbered by a bunch of national obligations and, let's be honest, a bunch of non-smart populations in poorly run provinces.