Weekly Note to Supporters of the Citizens Centre
from Link Byfield
January 19, 2004
**Update on the Oscar Lacombe Campaign**
A surge of One-Click e-mails to Alberta Justice Minister Dave Hancock has come in since Friday. We're about to pass the thousand-mark. Keep spreading the word. www.citizenscentre.com/oscar.html
Our Web site has logged over 925 hits from Alberta Justice checking us out, but so far there has been no systematic response from the minister. Stay tuned.
**Update on the McClelland Committee hearings**
If you live in northern Alberta, turn out to the provincial government's Alberta Agenda public meetings next week, and show the MLAs you want them to stand up for provincial rights.
The hearings run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Grande Prairie Tuesday Jan. 27 at the GP Inn; Peace River Wednesday Jan. 28 at the Peace Valley Inn; and Ft. McMurray Thursday Jan 29 at the Sawridge Hotel.
TITLE: The Maritimes would be better off without transfers, and so would all of Canada
They say in a democracy people get the government they deserve. I say they get the government they expect.
This is what Conservative Party leadership candidate Steve Harper was getting at when he went to New Brunswick last week and spoke the unspeakable truth--again.
Two years ago he went out there and said the biggest problem facing Atlantic Canadians is their defeatist attitude. They expect to be poor and politically dependent, and so they are.
Such candor may be impolitic, but I think Harper's right, and it's time a federal party leader said it. When someone in the Alliance misspoke himself before the last election (I think he called Nova Scotians lazy) then-leader Stockwell Day felt obliged to twist himself in knots insisting that Nova Scotians are the "hardest-working people in Canada." Oh really.
Harper isn't saying Maritimers are lazy, of course. He's saying they think they can't make it on their own steam. And because they assume it, it's true.
They assume they need about 30 cents of every dollar in their economy to come as a net federal transfer from the economies of Ontario and Alberta. They needed that $250,000 to keep Piccadilly Plastics going in Port au Port, Newfoundland, and $480,000 for the Atlantic Canada Cruise Association, and $173,000 for a new sporting-goods manufacturing company in Yarmouth.
They assume they need the special eligibility rules for EI that Ottawa gave the Atlantic in 1971 - rules that siphon billions of federal dollars a year from Alberta into eastern Canada.
In 1993 New Brunswick Liberal minister Doug Young actually changed the EI changes back to what they were, one of the few brave and honest things the Chretien government ever did. (After all, you're either unemployed or you're not, whether you're in Trinity Bay or Rocky Mountain House--why have different rules?)
Maritimers responded in the next election by slaughtering the Liberals (including Young) and electing a bunch of NDP and Tories promising to restore their special entitlements, which the Liberals then did.
In short, Atlantic Canadians expect special treatment and they get it, and it does them no good. It just makes them more politically dependent and defensive.
But nobody's supposed to mention it. It's like being on welfare: too painful and embarrassing to talk about.
Of course, we've been brainwashed into believing that until the Liberals began funnelling gobs of money to so-called "have-not" provinces in the 1960s, Maritimers lived like beggars in Calcutta.
In fact, they were only slightly less prosperous than other Canadians. True there were poor folks in the outports without electricity, and kids in Halifax and St. John with bad teeth. But the same was true in Ontario, the Prairies and B.C.
The economist Fred McMahon, formerly of Halifax and an expert in the perverse effects of regional transfers on the Atlantic economy, wrote about this problem in the November edition of Fraser Forum.
Canada, he says, transfers more regional equalization funds than any other country in the world. As a direct result, other countries or regions that were stagnant a generation ago (i.e. Ireland, the Dixie cotton states, Taiwan) have adapted and are now prosperous in their own right while Atlantic Canada is still hooked on political hand-outs that Ottawa transfers from Alberta.
However, if Atlantic Canadians are saps for taking the money, contributing regions are even worse saps for paying it. They have never seriously attacked the system. How often have we heard provincial politicians in Alberta, Ontario and B.C. fall into the fatuous federal rhetoric of "national sharing," instead of telling Ottawa to back off and leave everyone alone?
It isn't "sharing," and it benefits nobody except the federal politicians and bureaucrats who make their living handing it out.
But that would require us to raise our expectations.
- Link Byfield
Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
Suite 203, 10441 - 178 Street
Edmonton, AB T5S 1R5
Phone: 780-481-7844
Toll Free: 1-866-666-6768
Fax: 780-481-9983
contact@citizenscentre.com
www.citizenscentre.com
from Link Byfield
January 19, 2004
**Update on the Oscar Lacombe Campaign**
A surge of One-Click e-mails to Alberta Justice Minister Dave Hancock has come in since Friday. We're about to pass the thousand-mark. Keep spreading the word. www.citizenscentre.com/oscar.html
Our Web site has logged over 925 hits from Alberta Justice checking us out, but so far there has been no systematic response from the minister. Stay tuned.
**Update on the McClelland Committee hearings**
If you live in northern Alberta, turn out to the provincial government's Alberta Agenda public meetings next week, and show the MLAs you want them to stand up for provincial rights.
The hearings run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Grande Prairie Tuesday Jan. 27 at the GP Inn; Peace River Wednesday Jan. 28 at the Peace Valley Inn; and Ft. McMurray Thursday Jan 29 at the Sawridge Hotel.
TITLE: The Maritimes would be better off without transfers, and so would all of Canada
They say in a democracy people get the government they deserve. I say they get the government they expect.
This is what Conservative Party leadership candidate Steve Harper was getting at when he went to New Brunswick last week and spoke the unspeakable truth--again.
Two years ago he went out there and said the biggest problem facing Atlantic Canadians is their defeatist attitude. They expect to be poor and politically dependent, and so they are.
Such candor may be impolitic, but I think Harper's right, and it's time a federal party leader said it. When someone in the Alliance misspoke himself before the last election (I think he called Nova Scotians lazy) then-leader Stockwell Day felt obliged to twist himself in knots insisting that Nova Scotians are the "hardest-working people in Canada." Oh really.
Harper isn't saying Maritimers are lazy, of course. He's saying they think they can't make it on their own steam. And because they assume it, it's true.
They assume they need about 30 cents of every dollar in their economy to come as a net federal transfer from the economies of Ontario and Alberta. They needed that $250,000 to keep Piccadilly Plastics going in Port au Port, Newfoundland, and $480,000 for the Atlantic Canada Cruise Association, and $173,000 for a new sporting-goods manufacturing company in Yarmouth.
They assume they need the special eligibility rules for EI that Ottawa gave the Atlantic in 1971 - rules that siphon billions of federal dollars a year from Alberta into eastern Canada.
In 1993 New Brunswick Liberal minister Doug Young actually changed the EI changes back to what they were, one of the few brave and honest things the Chretien government ever did. (After all, you're either unemployed or you're not, whether you're in Trinity Bay or Rocky Mountain House--why have different rules?)
Maritimers responded in the next election by slaughtering the Liberals (including Young) and electing a bunch of NDP and Tories promising to restore their special entitlements, which the Liberals then did.
In short, Atlantic Canadians expect special treatment and they get it, and it does them no good. It just makes them more politically dependent and defensive.
But nobody's supposed to mention it. It's like being on welfare: too painful and embarrassing to talk about.
Of course, we've been brainwashed into believing that until the Liberals began funnelling gobs of money to so-called "have-not" provinces in the 1960s, Maritimers lived like beggars in Calcutta.
In fact, they were only slightly less prosperous than other Canadians. True there were poor folks in the outports without electricity, and kids in Halifax and St. John with bad teeth. But the same was true in Ontario, the Prairies and B.C.
The economist Fred McMahon, formerly of Halifax and an expert in the perverse effects of regional transfers on the Atlantic economy, wrote about this problem in the November edition of Fraser Forum.
Canada, he says, transfers more regional equalization funds than any other country in the world. As a direct result, other countries or regions that were stagnant a generation ago (i.e. Ireland, the Dixie cotton states, Taiwan) have adapted and are now prosperous in their own right while Atlantic Canada is still hooked on political hand-outs that Ottawa transfers from Alberta.
However, if Atlantic Canadians are saps for taking the money, contributing regions are even worse saps for paying it. They have never seriously attacked the system. How often have we heard provincial politicians in Alberta, Ontario and B.C. fall into the fatuous federal rhetoric of "national sharing," instead of telling Ottawa to back off and leave everyone alone?
It isn't "sharing," and it benefits nobody except the federal politicians and bureaucrats who make their living handing it out.
But that would require us to raise our expectations.
- Link Byfield
Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
Suite 203, 10441 - 178 Street
Edmonton, AB T5S 1R5
Phone: 780-481-7844
Toll Free: 1-866-666-6768
Fax: 780-481-9983
contact@citizenscentre.com
www.citizenscentre.com