Breakfast of Moochers

Most of Canadian politics can be explained by one word: Quebec.

Equalization is supposed to allow the six recipient provinces to provide “comparable services” to the four donor provinces.

But Quebec, which received $8.3 billion or 60% of all equalization transfers in the last fiscal year, provides services as a have-not province that are nowhere available among the haves.

There is no other province where publicly funded daycare is available for $7 a day, when its total cost is seven times that, $49 a day.

This is why Quebec, with only 20% of the daycare-age kids in the country, has about half the daycare spaces in the country. Thanks, Alberta.

There is no other province where university tuition fees are $1,800 a year for undergraduates, allowing Quebec residents to attend McGill, the country’s most renowned university, for about half what it would cost to attend the University of Alberta, the biggest donor province.

Quebec is a have-not province in the sense that a psychosomatic is sick. From time to time members of the mainstream media ask, genuinely perplexed, why some in Alberta want to separate. The above is the answer. Quebec is not like Newfoundland, which is a small island far away from the economic heartland of North America. It is not like Saskatchewan, with a population of only a million people, deep in the interior of the continent. Quebec has a superb strategic location, vast mineral resources and a highly educated workforce. If it is indeed relatively poorer than Ontario, than it has only its own policies to blame. 

Whatever the well intentioned rhetoric at the start of the Equalization program, in practice it has become a colossal bribe to keep Quebec in Canada, and the Atlantic provinces voting for the government of the day. With the sole exception of Medicare, there is no other government program that does more to promote statism in Canada as Equalization. It has distorted the political cultures of at least five of the ten provinces. It grants the advocates of big government a permanent natural base of perhaps 30% of the national electorate. 

To break Equalization would mean breaking the culture of dependency across much of this country. It would be a dramatic victory for freedom in Canada. We have seen the yelping generated by making the Census long-form voluntary. Any politician who would dare challenge the Cult of Equalization would face a barrage ten times worse than Tony Clement now faces. Stephen Harper, we can be sure, doesn't have that kind of guts.

Comments

[nomdeblog]

Nor does Tim Hudak have that kind of guts even though this province is growing with immigration and needs to prevent the equalization billions flowing out of here. Actually McGuinty did confront this early in his mandate before he turned his priorities to bicycle helmets and smoking in the car.

Interestingly, most Quebecois do not even know they are benefiting from equalization because they are even more misinformed by the media than the ROC. The CBC in Quebec is a cesspool of separatists. Hopefully Quebecor’s Sun TV starts to break down the myths that persist in Quebec that the ROC is a burden. But even Bouchard’s Manifesto Lucids calls for measures to pay down Quebec's massive debt of 40% Quebec GDP, increase university tuition and charge appropriate Hydro rates.

Also, we fund the Bloc with the $1.95 per vote to keep the lies flowing. So the ROC is propping up this failed state much like we prop up despots in the ME with our oil funding.

Time to stop the mooching; Jane “the short form” Taber, who now runs the country, will get right on it.

[Patrick B]

Canada is a classic example of gerrymandering to serve a special interest: Quebec and its fellow travellers in the bureaucratic and business elite. it's not that Stephen Harper lacks the guts to tackle this democracy-destroying cabal, it's his, or anyone else's, inability to get a parliamentary majority. The "game" is truly rigged. Hence many Albertans wish to take our money and go.

[MarkOttawa]

Building on this at "Unambiguously Ambidextrous":

"Some provinces are more equal than others/Minimum Max"
http://unambig.com/some-provinces-are-more-equal-than-othersminimum-max/

Mark
Ottawa