Let¹s Get While the Gettins¹ Good

[farmers_son]

Cakadu, thanks for the good post and Grassfarmer too in an earlier post.

Cowman: You might be interested in this site which breaks down the head offices of Canada’s 800 largest corporations by province. On a per capita basis Alberta has more head offices than any other province. On an actual number basis Alberta is third behind Ontario who is first and Quebec a distant second. Some people think of head offices as where the buck stops. It is probably more accurate to think of head offices as where the decisions are made.

See: http://www.bcbc.com/archive/Corporate%20Head%20Offices%20Jan%202005.pdf

Just to clarify a point, there is corporate money circulating in the economy and tax money going to Ottawa and back and forth to the provinces that have both been mentioned in this thread. They are two different things.

I have heard my father say much the same thing as you about our wealth all going east. I myself would wonder about how much of our wealth goes south. However I think we need to consider that wealth does not sit idle in the economy, it is constantly on the move not sitting in a sock somewhere. Money moves east and south and probably comes back again. Alberta is the strongest economy in Canada right now and given the price of oil it is no wonder.

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, "One day we are all required to stand up and be a man and say ENOUGH! Either that or decide it is better to be a slave?"
So you'll fight Central Canada for your freedom but you won't do anything against the bigger and more immediate threat of becoming an American slave? Strange thinking.

[cowman]

Well first of all if being paid very well for a product is being a slave then I have no problem there? Giving away wealth created in this province in the form of taxation for nothing but abuse...I have a problem with?
If the "firewalls" suggested were in place Alberta would collect all taxes in Alberta and send Ottawa what they saw as fair. The "gasoline tax" would be a good example? Designed to build and maintain the infrastructure? Let the tax collected on the road tax go to build and maintain the roads in Alberta?
Let Quebec and PEI pay for their bridges and roads out of their own share of the road tax? Don't take the $1 billion from Alberta and pave all the roads in Quebec while we pound it out on the potholes!
If my family is poor because we don't get out and hustle does that mean we should have all the goodies of the guy busting his butt down the road? That is basically not a good thing because it kills incentive and a good work ethic?
Works the same with regions? Why should the Quebec government get its house in order as long as someone else is picking up the tab? And then to top it off by whining for some more! We have a situation where the Quebec citizen gets more from this "welfare" than the ones paying for it! Do you think that is fair? Is that a good sustainable system?

[FarmRanger]

Nice choice grassfarmer, put up with the status quo, or be an American slave. Somehow, I think we aren’t that limited in our choices.

We can talk all we want about money moving here there and everywhere, but the fact still remains that when our TAX money goes into the sinkhole in Ottawa, precious little ever returns. It is taxed away from hard working Canadians, and spent in dubious ways by corrupt and power hungry Liberals who’ve been in office far too long. Their contempt for the taxpayer is deplorable, resulting in Adscams, and election vote buying becoming an industry funded by us, the taxpayers.

[farmers_son]

Although today we are fortunate to have Canada’s strongest economy most people forget that Alberta received equalization payments from 1957 to 1964. In fact Alberta was among the first provinces to receive equalization payments in Canada. Interestingly enough the idea for equalization came from an American economist James Buchanan who became the United States 15th President. Buchanan developed the concept after watching the United States break out in civil war between the North and South.

I would point out that Alberta’s wealth did not come because Albertans are harder workers than people in Newfoundland or even that our government managed things better here. Our wealth came because of the BNA act enacted March 29, 1867 which gave provinces jurisdiction over Non-Renewable Natural Resources, Forestry Resources and Electrical Energy.

We must remember that provinces do not pay taxes to Ottawa. Canadian citizens and corporations in the country pay taxes to Ottawa who then distribute those dollars throughout the country. Canadian citizens and corporations too are free to move and reside anywhere in the country they wish. If anyone thinks Alberta is getting such a rotten deal from Confederation they can move to another province if they so desire and reap the benefits of Ottawa’s largess directly. However when we see the building booms in Calgary and Edmonton and along the #2 corridor it would seem as if the opposite is happening and Canadians are moving to Alberta in record numbers. The gist of the argument for separation cannot then be that things are not good in Alberta rather if the west separated things would be even better. That argument could look very hollow once the oil runs out.

[farmers_son]

We keep hearing about the doom and gloom when the oil runs out. Interestingly enough when I was first elected to municipal council we heard that we needed to pave all the road when the oil industry was still paying a huge chunk of the taxes. I never agreed with that line of thinking but over the years certain factions of council in their wisdom commenced paving local roads in a random ad hoc manner ( past their own property mainly ) and royally ticked off the oil industry because they could not move about to do their business. I don't think we have to be overly concerned with the prospect of oil being depleted to nothing. The potential of the tar sands hasn't even been tapped, new technology is being developed daily to get production out of shut in wells all across the province and new exploration is happening daily.
Scare mongering about what is going to happen when Alberta is out of oil is just a red herring as far as I am concerned.

[cakadu]

Emrald, the oil may not run out in our life time, it may not even run out in your grandchildrens lifetime, but it is a non-renewable resource which means that it will run out or get to the point where there is nothing worth bothering to go and get. Guestimates - and that's all they are - is that it will last for 150 years, which sounds like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things is like the blink of an eye. Consider how long it took for those pools of oil and tarsands to develop in the first place.

I have no problem with people believing that we are getting the shaft from Ottawa, because in large part I don't necessarily believe that the dollars are being spent in the wisest manner and the same could be said in our individual provinces and municipalities from time to time. What I do have a problem with is the seeming intolerance for a different viewpoint from the "separatists." In fact, I would go so far as to say that intolerance is worse than apathy but that is my own opinion.

Farmers_son is right - we all have choices in terms of where we want to live, what we do, etc. etc. What may seem like slacking to you or I, may be somebody's best at the time - we don't know their circumstances or haven't walked the proverbial mile in their shoes, so who are we to say they aren't doing enough? Perhaps our separatists can join Quebec separatists and get the best of both worlds - be separate AND get this perceived largesse.

[cakadu]

Linda, everyone that knows me will tell you that I am the first one to put myself in anothers shoes. Separatism is not the answer for any part of this country, however, we have spent billions appeasing Quebec so they would not leave confederation.
The analagy I use is of a family where one of the children is determined to leave and strike out on their own, catering to that one at the expense of the rest of the children just to get them to change their mind is non productive and likely will make the rest of the children resent the one that wants to leave.

Alberta got the shaft in the depression days, so did Saskatchewan. People here were starving, the countryside was virtually a dustbowl.
I have heard many of the pioneers in the oil business in this province speak of how they went to bankers in eastern Canada begging hat in hand for venture capital to explore for oil and gas only to be laughed out of town.

Now we look pretty attractive. If the feds in their wisdom try and help themselves to our resource revenue as they did in Lougheeds time you will see separatism rear its head in this province that will make Quebec's pale in comparison. Is it a good thing, no, but Albertans are fed up with being the ugly sister, then tolerated because we have learned some decent table manners !!! Kind of like the family where the son marries into 'old' money and they look down their nose at his farmer parents because they earn their living in close proximity to little bit of SH__ !!!

[grassfarmer]

Emrald1, It would appear obvious to me that mankind must prepare for the day when oil runs out - it is a finite resource. The chairman and CEO of Chevron oil stated recently that it took 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil - the next trillion will be used in 30 years and also that the world currently consumes two barrels for every new barrel discovered. Hubbert's "Bell curve" theory indicates that any given country or region would reach the peak of it's production curve at approximately the point half it's oil reserves were used up - after that it's all downhill. Most experts consider that the peak will be reached in the next couple of decades, some suggest we are at that point now. This affects not only Alberta but the world and we have got to address this problem seriously - sticking our heads in the sand (even the tar sands) will not provide a solution.

Cakadu, I wouldn't disagree with your opinion that separatists intolerance is worse than apathy, it certainly turns me right off wanting to a seperatist cause succeed in Alberta.
I think also that seperatists feel their general disatisfaction with current politicians will somehow be sidestepped by becoming independant. Politicians are politicians whatever the Government set up - you need to learn how to live with them or if you can't replace the people you elect - it's called democracy. Having "escaped" from Scotland just as the seperatist clowns took over there I'm told there is as much dissatisfaction with politicians now as there ever was. This is doubly compounded by now having three levels of Government to pay for instead of two. I assume this would be the case with Alberta too? you would still pay Ottawa for such things as national defense - or are we planning on having an Alberta army, navy and airforce too? Projects like this would soon make you realise how little wealth we have - longterm.

[ivbinconned]

The oil will run out...so the "experts" say! Remember Y2K.

The elected men that you say we can not control...are the ones, we in the west, don't elect! Thus is the reason for our debate!

At this point in the disscusion it might be instructive to go to...

http://www.citizenscentre.com/pdf/ccfd_special_report_2005.pdf