It is official now, my fellow Canadians. British Columbia is now accepting federal equalization payments. One of the major factors is the drop in commodity prices and demand from Asia. I thought it might be nice for some of your fellow have-notters to show you the ropes.
You are all welfare bums. Get used to hearing this. It does not matter if you have the exact same job as someone in Alberta or Ontario, you are now lazy. If they are feeling charitable, they might add the caveat “but not you of course” to the bolded statement above.
Work on a new identity. You need something to offset statement 1. For example, they will add for Atlantic Canada “but they are so friendly” and for Quebec “but they have so much culture”.
Expect flak for any dissenting opinion. If you express disagreement on any National policies, you will be called and ingrate.
Now sit back and let that sweet sweet Alberta oil money roll in!
I put this in the pit because I think there is the possibility for some ranting.
One of the other factors was the NDP and their “spend what we haven’t got” policies. The fucking NDP practically bankrupted the province - and left us nothing to show for it. 2 fucking fast ferries that barely worked and weren’t fast at all, a building for a high-tech university that can’t afford to operate and has had to send its students to the other local universities, and a freaking hydro rebate that nobody really needed in a desperate attempt to buy some votes in a last minute spree.
Same thing in the US, it’s just not as public. Many of our states take in a lot more federal funds than they pay in taxes, and vice-versa. The state of New York relies on money from Texas, it just follows a circuitous path in getting there.
Because of the division of responsibility and powers between the provincial and federal governments, the provinces will sometimes need to receive money (called equalization payments) to make up provincial shortfalls in providing services. If your province receives equalization payments, the you are a have-not.
The whole have have-not classification system is, in my opinion, rather silly. There are people that require financial assistance and there are those that don’t. Those that do are supported by taxes from those that don’t. In fact, a tax payer in a have-not province has a larger burden than the one in a have province because their overall taxes are generally higher and their services less.
Therefore the less financial assitance recipients your province has, the better your status. Alberta had a very clever way to reduce theirs, they gave them one-way tickets to British Columbia.
