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All this to say, Alberta, that we share your pain and we empathize. We know that the vast majority of you reject this notion of separation, but we want you to know how seriously you need to take it and that we are with you.<\/p>\n
Photo credit file photo<\/p>\n
Dear Alberta:<\/p>\n
I recall when we both were young, you turning 50, and me 10 years old. I temporarily lived in Saskatchewan and celebrated your golden anniversary in 1955. I travelled through you by train on my way to B.C. when I was just 11 and learned of the tragic Frank landslide of 1903 which took so many souls with it. Even at that age, I felt your pain and mourned with you.<\/p>\n
15 years later, as a young woman in business, I opened an office in Edmonton and spent many weeks in the little city of the 1970s and 80s, just a third of the size it is now.<\/p>\n
The highway between Edmonton and Calgary became a familiar trail where I sailed along under the big sky on the smoothness of that flawless highway.<\/p>\n
I went to Ottawa for five years and learned the relationship between provinces and the federal government, but I was not through with Alberta. After one term as member of Parliament, I was back in business and back in Alberta, opening a small office in Red Deer where we published a local magazine.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I watched how Alberta waxed while Manitoba waned. Many of our head offices left for Calgary, which was becoming a world-class city with its aspirations as high as its office towers. Jealous as I was as a Winnipegger, I couldn\u2019t help but admire the spunk and determination of Albertans who stood for all that is free and unfettered while we Manitobans had tied ourselves to a Maypole twirled by the labour movement through the NDP.<\/p>\n
When I went to in Ottawa, it was just in time to take up the cause of keeping Quebec in our beloved Canada. Co-chairing the Joint House Senate Committee on the Renewal of Canada, the Dobbie-Beaudoin Committee, taught me such more about the value of confederation and the autonomous role of the provinces within a united Canada. I understand that provinces have exclusive authority over education, healthcare, property and civil rights, the administration of justice, direct taxation, and the management of natural resources and public lands. I also learned how various federal governments have intruded on those rights by using the coercive leverage of their spending power.<\/p>\n
As in any family relationship, I wasn\u2019t always happy with some of the people of Alberta, particularly the Reform group under Preston Manning. While I understood the very real frustration that informed their decisions, I did not agree with their remedies. That mindset is what is still driving the quest for separation from Canada.<\/p>\n
That does not mean that a healthy debate over what works and what doesn\u2019t is not in line. But tying negotiations to a threat seldom has useful results. Just ask Trump and Carney.<\/p>\n
It is naive to think that an elected Senate would solve issues of perceived imbalance in the powers of Parliament. All that would do is to set up gridlock between the two Houses. As for the argument based on inequities in representation by population, any imbalance only favours the small provinces. Ontario\u2019s number of seats provide a member for every 132,000 electors while PEI and the Territories only need about 45,000 people to earn a seat. However, B.C. and Alberta are fairly equal with Ontario and Quebec, although B.C. has a small advantage in seat numbers over Alberta (128,000 to 136,000 respectively).<\/p>\n
The real problem lies with the so-called \u201cequalization\u201d payments, federal incursion into provincial powers, and more recently the federal claim to its residual powers under the constitution. When it comes to the latter, these are powers that were not explicitly listed in the 1867 Constitution because the subjects didn\u2019t exist then. Today this includes things such as aeronautics, nuclear energy, coastal pollution and the latest issue of climate change.<\/p>\n
The calculation of equalization payments is convoluted. The government of Canda admits, \u201cSome observers argue that the program may encourage recipient provinces to make decisions that maximize their Equalization payments rather than their long-term economic growth and that decision making regarding the Equalization program is often politicized.\u201d An example of this is where Quebec is said to keep its energy prices low because doing so will generate a larger share of federal Equalization. Quebec receives a little over 50% of the pool. In Manitoba\u2019s case, we get 18.5%, about $5 billon, a shameful amount for a province with untold resources. We are the second largest recipient of this welfare.<\/p>\n
But the real issue is with the Feds poking their noses into provincial business, sometimes using the residual powers to do so as in the question of the environment, carbon taxes and carbon capture. These federal decisions can have very serious impacts on the province\u2019s ability to compete for investment dollars. The Canada Health Act is another of those areas that irritatingly dictates how a state should guide its part of the program.<\/p>\n
All this to say, Alberta, that we share your pain and we empathize. We know that the vast majority of you reject this notion of separation, but we want you to know how seriously you need to take it and that we are with you. We need you, Alberta. We need your courage and your personal energy, your willingness to take risks and the excitement you bring to our country. Many of your citizens are our friends and relatives.<\/p>\n
And you need us. We are bound together in a union of history and co-operation that may have its bumps and clashes, but there is no Alberta without Canada and there is no Canada without Alberta. And we will fight for you.<\/p>\n
Dorothy Dobbie, C.M., is a local writer and publisher, a former MP, and a passionate Canadian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All this to say, Alberta, that we share your pain and we empathize. We know that the vast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[164,17,28681,28680,28682,84],"class_list":["post-68619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-alberta","tag-canada","tag-equalization-payments","tag-federalism","tag-provincial-rights","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}