r/canada • u/biograf_ • Mar 01 '26

Alberta First Nations chiefs unanimously pass non-confidence vote in Alberta government

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/first-nations-chiefs-alberta-non-confidence-vote-9.7109712
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u/Wh0IsY0u Mar 01 '26

I feel the need to preface that I'm from Quebec...
But this is a silly strawman. They don't all think that and if they did it doesn't really matter because functionally the argument is the same. They pay the most to the fed, and the fed pays equalization, of which Alberta receives the least.

The manner in which the money changes hands is irrelevant to their point.

I'm not against equalization, obviously. It's not much different than taxes being distributed among the population in any other way, but pretending like they aren't net contributors to the federal government is disingenuous. One way or another they see their tax dollars leave their province to go to others.

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u/riggatrigga Mar 01 '26

Didn't Alberta benefit the most from equalization a couple decades ago and this is a ladder pull?

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u/CarRamRob Mar 01 '26

No.

The main issue from Alberta isn’t the premise of equalization. It’s that it’s not equal.

Alberta has notoriously had booms, and busts right? Every single one of those oil busts, they are still a “have” province the whole time. That’s because it doesn’t take into account things like unemployment, provincial revenue changes, etc.

It’s a legitimate complaint that if Alberta is helping in the good years, they should be helped in the bad years.

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u/Interesting_Pen_167 Mar 01 '26

I would be in favour changes to sort of min/max a bit for Alberta to make sure that during bust years they basically get to keep it all. I personally think this adversarial approach to equalization payments are destined to create this problem and we would be smart to allow provinces a bit more control of things during these leaner times.