My sentiments about the sense of entitlement exactly hansel.
I was born and raised in Alberta, left for Ontario to go to university for 10 years and have now been living in Halifax for 3 years. I grew up hearing all about the damn lasy easterners taking all our god-given oil money.
When I came to Ontario it was quite a shock to not hear a “have” province complain so bitterly about transfer payments to “have-not” provinces. kingpengvin is correct, I have never heard Ontarians refer to themselves first as anything other than Canadians. Also, since I’ve been in Halifax, I have rarely noticed any Nova Scotians express any sort of resentment towards Ontario or Alberta for being so wealthy (but then again, Halifax is a fairly well-off city and half the population seems to originally be from Toronto) the most I’ve seen is annoyance when some numbskull from the Alliance party tells us we have a “defeatest attitude”.
This is the ugly side of regionalism, it makes you believe other’s difficulties are not your concern if they happen in a different province. This leads to acts like Alberta’s method of reducing the number of welfare recipients in their province by giving them one-way tickets to B.C. (did Ontario do this too?). To which my family would gleefully exclaim “Ralphie-boy ran the welfare bums outta town!” which is kind of ironic considering my family was once on welfare for a while.
Please take my comments about Alberta with a grain of salt, I do not have the most enlightened family. My father’s solution to Quebec separatism was to send in the army and kill a hundred thousand or so Frenchmen.
I also do have some sympathy for the political representation of the west, but that’s the way it goes when you have a relatively small population. I hear the refrain alot from westerners that the federal government has been elected before their votes have even been counted. But really, any area with a small population could make that complaint. If Atlantic Canada’s or the Windsor area in Ontario’s votes were counted last the same phenomena would happen for them.
I grew up in BC, but I’ve spent most of my adult life in Quebec. I grew up with what they call in Canadian Studies “Western Alienation” – the sense that central Canada was somehow rich, and that Quebec was being bribed into staying with the country.
When I got out here, I got to see the reality of Quebec first hand. This was 1995, when something like 1.2 million people in this province (of then 7 million) were unemployed. Vacant shops, long lines at the unemployment insurance office. The situation was pretty desperate here. And I’ve heard from people from the maritimes that the situation was even worse out there.
There’s talk of designating Quebec a “have” province, because our economy is booming now. If that happens, and if Alberta falls off the “have” list for whatever reason, I’d be perfectly happy knowing that our tax money to help out a province in need. I suspect people in most provinces feel the same way.
You can’t intersect economics and morality in the way that Uzi suggests. Let’s have a look at reality:
Suggesting that people “just move” from the place that they’re from–a connection that people tend to find important–is a bit much. Beyond that, I believe it was a certain Mr. Klein who, as mayor of Calgary, was denouncing “carpet-bagging Easterners” and “creeps and bums” who were infesting the West.
Structural unemployment is an extraordinarily difficult thing to overcome. It requires capital, and lots of it; a willingness to invest; and a willingness to adapt, which I think is more prevalent than people seem to contend. No one enjoys being unemployed. I think that if there is a problem, it is in the fact that such capital is poorly spent–like, if anyone saw Roger & Me, attempting to set up an amusement park and a tourism bureau in Flint, Michigan. Sure, it ought to be better spent. But that’s like saying, “government should do its job better.”
In the end, saying, “Nah, nah, why don’t you get a job?” may work for the Offspring, but isn’t really rigorous analysis, or, frankly, fair. I like the fact that I live in a country where we assume the best of people, make allowances for the worst, and give people a break.
Ulterior
BTW: I also hate it when PQ leaders claim that Quebec puts more into federalism than it takes out. What tripe.
Well, it looks like the left and right are lining up again…
Let me add a different twist to this: I am Albertan, and I have a slightly different perspective:
Albertans don’t mind the equalization payments, overall. I honestly do not hear a lot of complaining about that.
What Albertans are really annoyed about is what they perceive as a biased Federal government. For example, the NEP stuck in Albertan’s craws in large part because it had an ‘Albertans are second class citizens’ flavor to it. For example, the federal government wanted to not only send them the oil, but they wanted Alberta to pick up the shipping costs, AND they wanted to pay way below world prices for the oil. But, when it came to goods made out east, they weren’t willing to reciprocate and pay the shipping or give us any sorts of discounts (or give us tax breaks in equivalent amounts, or whatever).
Albertans are really annoyed that they are under-represented in the government. The power that Alberta wields in the government of Canada is much smaller in proportion to our actual population and economic size. In the last re-districting Alberta was short-changed again, and given fewer seats than should have been given due to population size.
Albertans don’t resent giving the money, but they get annoyed when it when it is spent on things they don’t support, like the aforementioned billion dollar gun registry.
Albertans feel like we are looked down on by the east. It didn’t help when Trudeau rode through the province giving us the finger. And it seems you can’t get into a discussion about Alberta for more than five minutes before the word ‘redneck’ is used in a sentence. This also tends to make us feel a little less charitable towards the people who want our money but sneer at our culture.
Albertans are politically further to the right than the rest of Canada, which keeps moving further to the left. Albertans are royally pissed off that the East is so damned apathetic about what we see as shocking amounts of corruption and incompetance in the government. The 1 billion dollar gun registry boondoogle is a very visible example of what annoys us. The despicable contempt Chretien has for the Canadian military, and its subsequent crisis of underfunding. The huge amounts of mismanaged funds. Literally billions of dollars that have simply vanished and cannot be accounted for. Patronage appointments. Bad foreign affairs management, to the extent that Canada is no longer a player on the world stage in any form.
And yet, like clockwork in every election Alberta almost unanimously votes against this government, and the rest of Canada sends out 30 percent of the people to yawn and vote them back in. This continual refusal to A) listen to us, or B) give us the electoral power we should have, tends to make us feel maybe a tad less charitable towards you.
And finally, Uzi does have a point about the fishing industry. A few years ago there was a special on ‘W5’ that contrasted the situation in the Maritimes with the coastal fishing economy of the U.S. There were some startling findings. The first was that hardly anyone works in the fishing industry in Canada during the off season. In the U.S., without the generous social programs, the culture has adapted to support two income streams. In the off-season, fishermen go to work in other industries, which were attracted to the area in the first place because of an abundance of available labor in the off season. In Canada, free money from the government crowded out the supply of labor, so the industry never developed.
The other startling thing was that the people in the U.S. coastal areas seemed much happier in general and positive towards their government than were the Canadians, who were depicted as being constantly angry and bitter, because they saw their government cheques as being an entitlement, and became incensed if they perceived a drop in the amount of the benefit they received.
In the long term, the Maritimes would be better off if the flow of federal money was slowed down and they were forced to look after themselves a little more.
In fairness to Premier Klein, his only mistake was publicly announcing it. Every welfare department in Canada does the same without hesitation (I know this because my father worked for the Department of Social Services in Saskatchewan for many years). The cost of a bus ticket is less than the next monthly payment.
I guess I have to admire Klein for admitting it. He does seem to have a peculiar tendency for honesty. I won’t just blame Alberta for this regionalism hereafter.
The more I think about it, the less it seems like a bad thing for welfare departments to willingly ship their clients to other provinces. The media’s attitude is “Oh my God, Ontario is trying to dump its poor people on someone else.” But if you’re on welfare, and want to go somewhere else with less unemployment to find work, it’s not helpful for your case worker to say “Oh no! You’re staying right here to collect your cheques every month.”
Yes, but dumping problems that you should be handling on someone else isn’t right. Sending people from low unemployment rate Alberta to high unemployment rate BC doesn’t help anyone. Even though there is a certain irony in it.
Isn’t it odd that we have more prejudices and misconceptions against each others provinces/regions than we do about other nations?
I know most Easterns are hard working tough people who would rather have steady paycheques rather than hand outs and yet there is this misconception of them being lazy whiners just because their province is not wealthy and oppurtunities are scarce.
Many people here have an attitude that Albertans are the nations racsist rednecks who complain too much because they can’t buy a bigger piece of the pie with their oil money. That is obviously not true either. I have family from there who while politically more conservative than myself are well educated resonable people.
Ontario is seen the greedy bloated province who doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the country and wants to dictate its policies on the rest of the nation.
Quebec, despite the fact that majority of the provence twice voted against seperation is sen as either traitors or selfish whiney brats who demand and are given everything they want.
Did I miss any stereo types we should stomp out on this board?
Lets face it we can disgree and have different opinions but if we really want the Straight Dope on Canada we should fight the ignorence we have of our own people.
Ya ever driven through BC? A broken down Camero and a rusting pickup truck on blocks in the front yard. I always expect to see some inbred yokel sitting on the porch playing a banjo! Having grown up there I can say this is closer to the norm than the granola-crunching, dope smokin’, communist vegans most people think of when you say BC. Other than that it’s a nice place!
What ?!?! Do I hear the voices of reason and tolerance ? You all sound like a bunch of damn Manitobans who don’t know what side of the country they’re on.
Poor Manitoba the province regions fight to claim the others own. In the West MB is seen as an Eastern provence and in the East it is seen as part of the West.
Having lived in Manitoba (Portage La Prairie and Gimli) for a couple of years, I have to say that attitudes of reason and tolerance were something I seldom encountered there. Racism seemed very prevalent. Of course, I spent most of my time there working long, long hours on a farm and, later, cooking in a restaurant, so I didn’t meet a large cross-section of the population. (My perception may have been skewed by a sense of dislocation I blame on separation from the sea.) And perhaps there is more racism here in the east than I realize.
Is this another aspect of regional difference? Has anyone else found racism to seem more prevalent in one region of the country than in another?
Considering that the federal government purchased Alberta in 1868 form the Hudson’s Bay Company, and turned around by giving away vast tracts of land to Albertans,and financed the transportation infrastructure for Albertans, I find it somewhat disappointing that some Albertans are resentful of the fact that they share their wealth at all.
It is quite ironic that Alberta’s ability to retain their oil wealth from the rest of Canada is due to Ottawa’s big screw up in 1888. When Ottawa realized that there was significant mineral wealth under the surface, It decreed that the crown would only grant the surface of the land to prospective farmers. That was so that ALL CANADIANS WOULD SHARE THE WEALTH. However when provincial status was granted in 1905, The British North America Act of 1867 kicked in to award the crown assets to the Province of Alberta, and prevent the federal government from applying an income tax to the province. Had private landowners owned the oil, the federal government could have taxed the oil revenue. So by a quirk of history, Alberta,was virtually given its protected wealth by Eastern Canada.
I’d be interested to know if the oil rich states in western America have the same protection for their oil wealth.
