Alberta, Natural Resources, and the Rest of Canada

Politics & Elections
341

Along with the demonization, the promotion of moral exceptionalism. The belief that only your preferred group deserves rights and that the government can do no wrong because it is ‘your’ government. Everyone else should just shut up and accept the status quo.

This is a familiar tactic: rather than addressing the argument, the speaker is delegitimized. People are labeled “lunatics,” “extremists,” or worse, so their points don’t have to be engaged with. It functions as a defense mechanism while avoiding the harder task of acknowledging that there may be real concerns being raised that existing institutions or policies have failed to address.

When disagreement is written off as moral failure, it’s usually because the underlying issues are harder to answer or dismissed outright.

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Dude, you posted a 30 minute Youtube video featuring a guy most of us have never heard of, with no attempt to explain what he says or why we should care what he says.

Why should we take this any more seriously than someone posting a Youtube video claiming to prove that WTC 7 was definitely brought down with demolition charges, or that the Earth is definitely completely flat with a giant impassible ice wall in Antarctica?

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Okay, so I’ve taken one for the team and listened to this guy blather on for half an hour. Still have no idea who he is or why I should give any weight to his opinions. However, will summarize my take on his points and respond to them.

The first half of the video runs through reasons given for why Albertan independence is impossible/unworkable, and why they’re wrong. Most of these are indeed dumb objections and his response that they’re dumb is perfectly reasonable.

Note: I’m using the quote function to indicate where I’m paraphrasing the video. These are not direct quotes because I’m not enough of a lunatic to try to transcribe the whole damn video. Due to my inherent bias my summaries may not always be adequately charitable reformulations of the video, but if you don’t like that summarize the damn video yourself. Why am I even doing your homework?

  1. Alberta will be landlocked. Under the current scheme of governance Alberta has no right to demand BC allow pipelines. The federal government does, but Carney “ignores the constitution” by failing to require BC to allow pipelines. A free Alberta would be able to negotiate with BC for transit rights because BC needs to transit goods through Alberta just as much as Alberta needs BC. (And later in the video talks about turning off pipeline to Burnaby refinery so BC will run out of gas in 4 days, and this also means Alberta has a strong negotiating position.)

Okay, so this is whole section has a bunch of problems. First off, I almost choked on my rum when he straight out says that Carney is “ignoring the constitution” by not forcing BC to allow pipelines, as if the fact that Ottawa has jurisdiction over inter-provincial affairs somehow mandates that it side with Alberta over BC on this issue. Second, our friend apparently doesn’t understand exactly how ports and railroad networks function. While it’s true that currently vast amounts of goods transit from BC ports through Alberta to points east and vice versa, there are also ports on the east coast and on the Great Lakes, and Alberta tries to blackmail goods transiting their territory, goods will just move around Alberta instead of through it. Eventually, anyways. It’s entirely possible for container ships to transit the Panama Canal, unload on the east coast, and ship the containers west by rail, rather than unloading in Vancouver and shipping east by rail. The price isn’t even very different. Both sea and rail transport are very inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. Alberta would have some leverage because the short term disruption would be extreme, but in the long run he is dead wrong about who needs who more vis a vis transit rights.

  1. Healthcare as an obstacle to independence. Healthcare is delivered by province, feds have nothing to do with it besides transfers, which Alberta would come out ahead on.

Obviously. Do people actually make this argument against leaving Canada? Because that would be dumb. I could see an argument being made that an independent Alberta wouldn’t be held to the Canada Health Act, and voting for independence would be tantamount to voting for privatizing health care, and that’s a good reason not to vote for independence. Our guy doesn’t address that argument, and based on other things he says I’m guessing he’s in favour of privatizing health care, but he doesn’t actually discuss that topic.

  1. Much of Alberta is Crown Land and so Alberta can’t leave with it. Actually, the Crown land in Alberta, with the exception of military bases and national parks, is owned by the provincial Crown not the federal Crown, so this poses no obstacle.

Sounds plausible to me, though I’m not a constitutional lawyer. No objections to this.

  1. Loss of federal transfer payments. Alberta is a net contributor, so all the federal transfers Alberta receives is Alberta money to begin with. Plus Alberta would get to keep an extra 48B (presumably that’s per year?)

Well duh. Again, I doubt anyone actually makes this argument against independence. Obviously Alberta would come out ahead re: current tax scheme. I do object to the framing that “Alberta” is sending money to Ottawa. In reality, Alberta doesn’t send any money to Ottawa, nor does Alberta send money via equalization to Quebec etc. Canadian taxpayers send money to Ottawa in proportion to their wealth. As Albertans are disproportionately wealthy compared to TROC, they fund a disproportionate amount of federal transfers to provincial governments.

But that’s a nitpick about how the situation is characterized. The gist of what he’s saying is obviously correct.

  1. Businesses will leave Alberta like they were planning to leave Quebec if the referendum there had passed. Actually businesses were only planning to leave Quebec because Quebec is awful. Alberta is so awesome that businesses will swarm to Alberta because it will be such an incredible place to do business.

To the extent this is correct, it’s probably not as great for the average Albertan as he’s making it out to be. He’s probably correct that there’d be very few businesses leaving. There would be some businesses showing up to exploit Albertan resources, probably, because if the new government of an independent Alberta is anything like the current provincial government it will be entirely in the pocket of resource extraction industries and will do anything they want. This will be really good for oil & gas executives and shareholders. Probably not so great for average Albertans, because it’s going to lead to accelerating wealth disparity. That’s largely an issue with unfettered capitalism rather than Albertan independence, though.

  1. Banking as an obstacle to independence. Current Canadian chartered banks would continue to operate in Alberta. Nothing would change, except Alberta would have control over banking regulations instead of Ottawa so they could foster greater competition etc and make things better.

Again not sure anyone with a brain thinks loss of banking services is a real argument against independence. Amusing and typically conservative that he thinks that having a government that wants to deregulate everything to the benefit of industry will result in changes to the financial industry that will benefit common Albertans, but again this is an issue with unfettered capitalism rather than Albertan independence. Was 2008 really so long ago that people have already forgotten that letting banks make their own rules is a horrible idea?

  1. Governance capacity, ie Alberta couldn’t do all the things Ottawa does. Actually Ottawa is horrible at everything it does like have you been in a Service Canada office lately? It’s just horrible. And national defense is a disgrace, etc etc, Alberta wouldn’t have any trouble taking over.

I mean, sure, generally speaking. An independent Alberta shouldn’t have any trouble providing the services the federal government currently provides. Obviously there’d be some pain in getting some things set up, and there’d be some economies of scale losses with regards to some things, but generally I can’t disagree.

  1. First Nation treaty rights. FN people don’t get a veto. They’d each have a single vote, just like everyone else. All the land in Alberta is covered by treaties, unlike BC etc where there’s lots of unceded land, so the First Nations have no claim on anything but their reserves. They’d be able to continue having Ottawa provide them with services or could negotiate new awesome, modern deals with the government of an independent Alberta that wouldn’t be burdened by the paternalism of the past.

Okay, I’m very much not qualified to speak authoritatively on this subject, but I think this is largely full of shit. The treaties ceded claim to the land to the federal government, not the people of Alberta. This is way more legally complicated than he admits. I believe most of the FN organizations are vehemently opposed to even considering independence, which implies they have pretty dismal expectations of relations with an Albertan government given how fraught their historical relationships with Ottawa have been.

  1. Alberta won’t get international recognition. LOL Carney recognized Palestine so everyone will recognize us what a dumbass.

I found this section hilarious. Like, does he seriously think that recognition of a Palestinian state would have anything whatsoever to do with international recognition of an independent Alberta? The whole “issue” is dumb to start. He’s clearly positing a situation where the Canadian government itself is granting Alberta independence. Why on earth would foreign governments not recognize Alberta as an independent nation in that situation?

The second half of the video is about all the advantages Alberta would have as an independent state, although several of these are more rants about the current state of Canada.

  1. Alberta could sell more oil because there’d be no more eco-evangelism to contend with.

This is obviously about 90% of the basis of the entire movement. Fuck the environment, we’re burning all the oil, and it’s ethically mandatory that we profit off of burning all the oil to the maximum extent possible. I trust my characterization of this view adequately conveys my opinion of it.

  1. No income tax. Alberta would be wealthy enough that everyone could keep every penny they earn.

Well, obviously the money to run the governmental services of an independent Alberta would come from somewhere. I assume that he’s implying that oil & gas royalties pay 100% of the bills? I’m a bit foggy on the math here. I’m unwilling to spend more than a few minutes googling, but I get ~$80B provincial expenditures in fiscal 25-26 from the latest govt of AB fiscal update, plus ~1/8 of federal expenditures less transfers to provinces ($585B-$105B)/8 or ~$60B, for a very rough total of $140B to match current spending ignoring loss of economies of scale, and ignoring also ignoring major policy changes like privatizing healthcare or whatever. Alberta oil & gas royalties in fiscal 25-26 estimated at $15B, which is a full order of magnitude less. This is just looney tunes. Absolute blatant lie. Alberta can’t fund its current provincial programs without a provincial income tax, let alone pick up federal programs. Even if you grant every dollar of federal income tax goes to transfers to Quebec (which is obviously a gross overstatement) and allow that the oil & gas industry doubles (which is also ridiculous) Alberta obviously can’t afford to not have income tax. It’s not even close.

This is just a complete lie. A huge lie. A completely intentional, blow smoke up people’s ass lie. The same sort of mendacious dishonesty as the Brexit lies about all the money going to Brussels will make NHS flush with cash. It’s a lie. He’s got to know it’s a lie. It’s a headline policy, no tax, how awesome is that, won’t everything be wonderful, and it’s utterly completely impossible, and he knows it, or else he’s astonishingly bad at math and shouldn’t be trusted with a chequing account. But no, he knows this is full of shit and says it anyways, knowing it’s a lovely selling point and knowing that his audience will want to believe it.

Utterly despicable.

Actually worse than that. Completely disqualifies everything he says in the entire video, even the obviously correct stuff where he counters dumb arguments that nobody’s actually making. This sort of dishonesty makes me violently angry, because it’s so terribly destructive. It’s quite analogous to the Brexit BS, where Farage & Co knew they were spouting BS the entire time, did it anyways, with the result that the UK has suffered massive financial setbacks, but since Farage and his ilk have personally done just fine they’d do it all over again regardless of how horrible it’s been for the very people they pretend to champion. It’s people like this that make me think that Maximilien Robespierre didn’t go far enough.

  1. Albertans will get a representative government. It’s currently impossible for Alberta to have fair representation in Ottawa because elections are decided before the polls in Alberta even close. Alberta has no say in the laws that regulate it.

Aside from the fact that this is completely false, I have no objection to it. Fuck, dude, we just recently had almost a decade where the federal government was an extension of Alberta conservatism. And “no say”? Bullshit. Alberta MPs get to vote on every single matter brought before Parliament.

  1. Alberta will have control over immigration. Canada has open borders, immigrants have ruined everything, stealing all the jobs, making housing unaffordable, standard anti-immigration rant.

  2. Alberta will have control over criminal law. Legal system is currently two-tier, with people like immigrants getting off easy because of cultural differences stuff. (This is bizarre on its face, pretty sure he’s actually whining about Gladue sentencing recommendations and the like but doesn’t want to come out and say so.) Also Alberta would be able to have a castle doctrine so that people could protect themselves without worrying about being thrown in jail themselves.

  3. Alberta could have a constitution that would protect the rights of its citizens, not allowing Ottawa to trample all over them (doesn’t go into details, but I think this is whining about Covid restrictions and convoy stuff)

@Euphonious_Polemic appears to be approximately correct about the guy being a convoy-supporting lunatic. Also, significant whiff of racism in points 4 & 5.

So, I’ve now devoted far more of my time to taking your video seriously than it deserved. I’ve addressed the points he makes on their merits with a minimum of demonization and only a little of my habitual snark. Aside from the obviously correct rejections of blatant straw man objections to Albertan independence that I’m not sure anyone is actually making, the entire argument is 1) we must burn more oil and make as much money as possible doing it, fuck the environment, 2) it’s not fair that wealthy Canadians pay more taxes than less wealthy Canadians, 3) fuck those bleeding heart liberals re: immigration and soft on crime etc.

Next time please do the summary yourself. I will not be doing your homework for you again.

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I’m posting information from those on the forefront of the independence movement. I’ve already gone over some of the benefits to Albertans of dumping Canada. This is from a leading voice doing the explanation.

Before I go any further, the proposal for the referendum has been approved and now the proponents (APP) can start gathering signatures.

Alberta has no leverage now.

That is an opinion. Canada has one of the most expensive healthcare systems and one of the only ones where private healthcare isn’t part of the solutions. That you won’t even look at other options is the concern. ‘ooh, private healthcare options…scary’.

Well he is a KC and a constitutional lawyer.

Sigh. Do you think that Alberta has the highest gdp/pp based upon them being kept as slaves? Allowing business to operate under REASONABLE regulations and taxes makes them want to invest. That benefits all Albertans. Why are we arguing this at all? I’ve never ever said we need to stop regulating industry, protect the environment, or consult with indigenous people. Nor does he or anyone wanting independence.

Options are almost always beneficial to the consumer.

The good thing is that they would choose what they wanted. They could remain under Ottawa’s thumb as it is today. The land was ceded as per the treaties and that land is part of the Alberta Crown. They can be upset as much as they like, but that doesn’t get them a veto.

No, he is saying that Carney opened the door to Canada not being able to object to the US declaring us a new state (country not US state).

Again, stopping Alberta (and Canada. You have every right to cut off your own nose, but leave ours alone) from producing oil does not prevent one barrel of oil from being burned by those who buy it. They either get it from us or from someone else.

Obviously. I have problems with this one as well. I am certain that taxes will go down even noticeably at first. But I don’t know how they plan to remove all personal income taxes. I can only think that it is the combination of increased business activity and investment along with increased resource production and the resulting revenue from that. Otherwise, at this point, I don’t have a good enough answer to this.

And we traded it for the clown show for a decade. Things better now?

Albertans want to develop our resources and have investment in the province. We see Ottawa preventing this and actively working against that goal. And unarguably they are doing so with things like a tanker ban (while US ships transit the same waters). Eby, will gladly push LNG pipelines from his province, but when we want to do similar we are stymied by the politics.

Some of the other points.

Automatically assume racism rather than what Canada had previously that prioritized qualified applicants over refugees.

Yeah, put repeat offenders in jail and keep them there. Duh.

Yes and No. No one will give us a hero cookie if we don’t exploit our resources.

err, not sure is this is what you meant. But we don’t mind paying taxes to help others. We mind others not exploiting their resources and then telling us we’re evil while their hands are out. E.g. Quebec has ample LNG resources. They shouldn’t be receiving transfer payments from BC, Alberta, or Saskatchewan and then telling us they won’t allow a pipeline.

Immigration is key factor in housing issues. You can’t have more people coming in than you have accomodations being built.

And yeah, asking people to put their keys at the front of the house so the criminals have an easier time of it, is one of the most liberal/nutty things I’ve ever heard of in my life.

Well, i have to applaud you for doing so even if I don’t agree with all your conclusions. Good effort.

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Thank you for your service!

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A so-called “leading voice” who many of us in Alberta have never heard of.

Yes, and only 177,000 for separation. Have you forgotten that the “Stay in Canada” petition needed ~300,000 signatures, thanks to Danielle Smith fudging the rules. The latter got 400,000 signatures in thirty days.

As one of my crusty old law professors said bluntly, “You lose Rule of Law when the government makes shit up to justify its actions.” Well, Danielle Smith made shit up to justify her actions. Guess which of ten provinces is no longer a Rule of Law province?

My thanks go to @Gorsnak also. Thanks for taking one for the team, and watching the video, and making notes!

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Only 177,000 to trigger the process to get a referendum, not to separate. If Lukaszuk had waited he’d have been under newer rules as well. I thought it was 3 months to get that amount of signatures?

348

According to you, you don’t know anyone who is pro-independent, so I’m not surprised.

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You are correct. My mistake, I should have added that detail. Thanks for clarifying.

Well, there’s the drunk at the end of the bar who, after six beers, mutters and slurs, “Fucking Trudeau. Alberta independence is what we need.” Which Trudeau, he’s not clear on.

But you’re correct again, I don’t really know him. I do know the other regulars at the bar, and they all want to stay in Canada.

350

It’s government. If it isn’t obscure they don’t think they are doing their jobs.

351

You are massively underselling the problems with this, and blithely ignoring the towering importance of this plank in his platform. My back of the napkin math shows oil & gas revenue making up roughly 10% of projected expenditures. You can make massive cuts to government services, posit enormous completely implausible economic growth, and still you get absolutely nowhere near the balanced budget he promises.

This is a blatant, mendacious, intentional lie on his key point. It invalidates everything he says.

You “don’t have a good answer to this.” Well no shit, because it’s absolute bullshit of the highest calibre. He’s saying that 2 + 2 = 40, and your response is that you’re not quite sure about it.

Way to miss my point. Allowing more competition in banking (by, for example, allowing US banks to use their US capital to meet Canadian regulations instead of requiring them to have adequate capital in Canada to meet those regulations) wouldn’t be a horrible thing. Allowing the financial industry to write its own regulations, the way that Alberta wants to let oil & gas write their own regulations, is a proven disaster. Canadian banking regulations in the 2000s were “stifling financial innovation” etc etc, letting the US financial sector run laps around it in profitability, right up until 2008 when it turned out that said financial innovation was actually criminal fraud on a scale that made a giant dent in the global economy, resulting in one of the largest scale privatized profits/socialized losses episodes in human history.

But once again, this specific topic isn’t you being wrong about Albertan independence. It’s you being wrong about the worship of corporate profits as a proxy for advancing the common good.

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Where do you get this from? I’m not saying it. No one is. You castigate me on the one hand and then go off on the other? I don’t have the answers for their financial claims yet and am asking for them directly, but this claim that we want the wild west and to live in an industrial wasteland is just fallacious.

353

So what currency will Alberta use? An Albertan dollar? I think “Bible Bill” Eberhart tried that already, and his project was dead by 1938. I know what he attempted, and it sounded good in theory, but really, paying $1.04 for $1.00 was just plain dumb. If you’re going to have a central bank, then you have to know how economics works, and you’re not going to rely on another country’s currency—then the other country makes your fiscal policy decisions, with no input from you.

So, Alberta won’t use the Canadian dollar, which is respected and even used by various world governments as a reserve currency. After all, do you really expect the Canadian government to allow Alberta to use the Canadian dollar after Alberta has told the Canadian government, “Fuck You”?

Thinking of international relations, has Alberta made any inroads in that way? The United Nations is an obvious target, but I would imagine that the UN regards Alberta as much like Scotland: with an independence movement, but not a large one, so it gets no seat at the UN. An independent Alberta might get a seat at the UN, but there are no guarantees as things stand. What about embassies and consulates in foreign countries? Can Alberta afford to set up embassies in foreign capitals, much less consulates in their major cities?

How about Alberta’s defense? Sure, we can put together a military out of 4.5 million people, and take over CFB Cold Lake and CFB Suffield—but how many young men and women of draftable age would sign up for an Albertan army (with no weapons) or air force (with no aircraft), and fercrissake, here’s the elephant in the room, Alberta cannot have a Navy. Canadian Forces offer so many opportunities, why would young people sign up for Albertan forces with nothing when the Canadian Forces at least can afford them to have guns and ships and planes?

I could go on, but in essence, Albertan independence has not been thought through by those who are espousing it. All Indepentists see is one goal: independence, with oil driving the economy. What the rest of us see has nothing to do with oil, or climate change, or a “Fuck You” to Ottawa.

I am one who wants Alberta to stay in Canada. I agree that the current arrangement is unfair to Alberta, and the other prairie provinces, I agree that Ontario and Quebec have far too much representation in the Commons and the Senate, and that ought to be balanced out. More Albertan Senators perhaps; I am qualified, if anybody is listening. (As per Constitution Act 1867, s. 23).

But the way to effect that is by engaging the federal government in honest negotiations, and yet another constitutional conference, if necessary. Danielle Smith has no interest in that approach; she wants to tell the federal government to “Fuck You,” while expecting the federal government to rain down all sorts of goodies on Alberta (one-third of the CPP fund, for one), and to tell British Columbia, “Fuck You, now, can we have a pipeline?” when Alberta separates. Yeah, that’s not how you get what you want when you are independent.

Alberta would become a third-world country, no more important to the world community than Bolivia or Mali, both without access to a port, like Alberta would be. Oh, we might get a vote at the UN, if it lets us in (no guarantees there), but our dollars would be worthless elsewhere, our military would consist of Bubbas with their deer rifles, and you’d have, at best guess, over half the population of Alberta, decamping for various places in Canada.

Is that really what you want? Look beyond “Independence Day” to the next day. What happens then?

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I’d sure as hell leave, most likely for Ontario (my original home), or Nova Scotia, where I have friends; or BC, where I also have friends. I wouldn’t buy what the Alberta government is selling upon independence. I’d get out before the Alberta government has the chance to depreciate the value of my house, when nobody wants to move to Alberta any more.

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There’s a lot packed into this post, but much of it rests on assumptions that simply aren’t true.

Independence doesn’t require inventing a new currency, nor does using another currency mean surrendering fiscal control. Plenty of sovereign countries use another country’s currency or peg to one while fully controlling taxation, spending, and regulation. Currency isn’t something that needs fixing immediately and isn’t some moon shot process.

The same applies to diplomacy and defence. New countries don’t wake up with a full embassy network. They start small, prioritize trade and security relationships, and rely on alliances like Canada does through NATO and NORAD. Who do you anticipate will be invading Alberta, btw? The US. Canada doesn’t have a military to prevent that. Canada? I’d take Bubbas with Deer rifles over the current state of the Canadian military. We can’t even figure out how to buy an airplane, fer christ sakes.

As for becoming a “third-world country,” that confuses geography with governance. Alberta already has high incomes, strong institutions, a skilled workforce, and a large tax base. Being landlocked is a logistics issue, not a sentence to poverty. Switzerland, Austria, and many others manage just fine through transit agreements. Canada would remain Alberta’s largest trading partner regardless of constitutional status, because geography doesn’t change.

The recurring theme here is treating independence as a tantrum rather than a response to long-standing structural problems. Alberta didn’t arrive at this discussion overnight, and it didn’t get here because people want to say “fuck you” to Ottawa. It got here after decades of engagement that haven’t produced meaningful change, and after watching the federation become increasingly centralized, rigid, and unresponsive.

Let’s be clear here. No one should be denied the power of their vote no matter where they live. This is about a difference on the direction of the country. Canada is becoming more and more centralized with Ottawa consolidating power and deciding based on their ideology. Screw anyone who has a different opinion. Indigenous feel they are not heard? We feel we’re not heard. There should not need to be an MOU to get things done. Alberta’s key resource is Oil and Gas. It benefits us and all of Canada. No one thousands of miles away should have a say on how we develop it. If legislation is put forward that primarily affects a province not theirs, then they should sit there and shut their mouth and withhold their vote. So, a tanker ban that affects BC, Alberta, and Sask. Why does an MP in Halifax have a say? Is that realistic? Hardly. This won’t be fixed by staying in Confederation.

You don’t have to support independence to acknowledge that reality. But dismissing it as unserious, unplanned, or driven by ignorant racist bubbas, avoids the harder question: why a growing number of people, not just those in Alberta, no longer believe the system can be fixed from within?

356

Well, this part of your post is mistaken. Alberta essentially funds all its own programs. It might get a portion of the money Albertans send to Ottawa back in transfer payments, but far less than we sent.

From the APP website:

Alberta becomes the least governed, least regulated and lowest taxed nation in the world with the highest Average Real GDP per capita.

The stated goal or vision is to eliminate personal income taxes. That will not happen overnight. An increase in oil revenues by increased production will offset much of taxes, along with full free trade with the US, other resource development, and other investments as corporations will come to Alberta due to its low tax regime. Taxes will decrease to the point of elimination, but not overnight. Even if we chose to use a 10% flat rate with a high deductible such as $50,000, this should be enough to offset current personal income taxes revenue while cutting total taxes paid for individuals in half. The flat tax is my opinion based upon things discussed many years ago. It is just one option.

Keith Wilson (fellow linked above. X post, so not sure how this link will work as I don’t use that platform) . Video of him explaining the tax situation.

About 30 Seconds in he says ‘initially’ we can have lower taxes. Confirming that eliminating PIT is not immediate. IMHO, just not sending the money to Ottawa will lower PIT.

In the same thread. Oil Wealth per Person

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Anything from that website is suspect: “Freedom from the WEF and WHO”?

358

I never said Alberta can’t fund its own programs. I said it can’t fund them without a provincial income tax, which your cite confirms. Your cite shows $79B spending on $74B total revenue of which $17B are resource royalties and the rest taxes/fees/fed transfers, which pretty much matches the math in my post (I had $80B spending and $15B resource revenue).

So I’ll repeat myself. Add in federal programs AB would be taking over, and you have a requirement to spend ~$140B, with ~$17B in resource revenue.

If you think there is any path to eliminating income taxes by some combination of program cuts and increased resource revenues from higher oil sales you are completely delusional. Like, blatantly dishonesty, either with yourself or with us. You might as well talk about your plans to increase winter daylight hours by flattening the Rockies to delay sunsets.

359

Why do we have a ‘requirement’ to spend $140B when the current budget is at $74B? Where do you get the idea it has to double? Even assuming ~$15B for Federal services we want to maintain, it will result in lower PIT for individuals and lower taxes for business based upon my suggestion for a flat tax.

No, I think you are dooming and glooming based on your own prejudices rather than looking at the numbers objectively.

360

Nitpick: based on the Alberta fiscal update your current revenues are $74B. Your current spending is $79B. Looks like you’re running a deficit.

Current fed spending is ~$585B. Transfers to provinces make up ~$105B of that, leaving ~$480B in federal program spending. Alberta’s per capita share of that is ~$60B. I spelled all this out in the post you quoted:

You can see the full federal budget here. The spending summaries are in Annex 1 on pg 245

Now you’re saying that the Alberta govt can pick up everything the feds do for $15B. This is, again, completely delusional. Actual costs of duplicating federal programs would be rather higher than Alberta’s current per capita share of federal spending (~$60B), because you’d lose a lot of economies of scale. We’ll ignore that and say you’ll get that back from cutting programs that don’t match Alberta’s priorities.

Where’s that $60B going? Well, very roughly, a quarter of it, or the $15B you so generously allow for federal program spending, is direct transfers to individuals - CPP/OAS/GIS, EI, and CCB (Canada Child Benefit). So unless you’re planning on ending government pension funding, you’re already out of money. Another 10% is debt maintenance, so unless you think you’re leaving the country without your share of the federal debt, that’s another $6B. The remainder is direct program spending, and I’m going crosseyed trying to find a simple chart breaking it down into greater detail with no success, but this is all spending in the ministries of Agriculture, CRA, Crown-Indigenous Relations, Employment, Energy, Environment, Finance, Fisheries and Oceans, Global Affairs, Helath, Housing & Infrastructure, Immigration & Citizenship, Justice, Defence, Public Safety, and Transport. Outside of Fisheries and Oceans, you’re going to want at least some spending in most of those areas.

But let’s just pretend that you can get away with $15B to pick up everything the feds do. That would take us to $95B spending, and again your resource revenues are currently sitting around $17B. Even if you could double oil production overnight, that still only covers 1/3 of your projected spending. And both of these assumptions are ridiculous. The actual spending requirements are higher, and the actual realistic increase in resource revenue is lower.

I’m not the one not looking at numbers objectively in this discussion.