Don’t forget about the prairies
A letter to Mark Carney.
Back in April, Christian Courier gave three university students a two-part assignment. First, to write an opinion piece sharing their view on the election (published online before we voted). Second, a letter to the new PM, whoever he might be, written after April 28. We hope you’ll appreciate hearing the hopes and fears of these younger voters. As you read their letters to Mark Carney, maybe you’ll even be spurred on to connect with a young person in your life and find out what they think about the issues facing our country today.
To The Right Honourable Mark Carney,
I laughed recently as you said something like “the visit from the King will be affirming to Canada’s sovereignty.” Isn’t that ironic?
Canadians have been talking about sovereignty more than usual. National sovereignty in the face of trouble to the south. Provincial sovereignty due to Western alienation. I have seen jokes about both of these issues online. From statements like: “Talk of separation is high treason,” to remarks like: “Trump did more with one tweet to unite Canada than 10 years of Liberal governments.”
But it’s not a joke. The conversations about separation in Western Canada are very serious to the people having them, and the fear of the United States will not repair it. Canada is divided. We may more or less agree that we won’t be the 51st state, but that does not make us united in our vision for how to move forward.
Anger and fear
Parts of Western Canada are angry at you for taking over in the wake of Justin Trudeau. Many people in Saskatchewan and Alberta fear what your government will do. Our provincial governments are attempting to balance their budgets while supporting us as citizens, but people are still angry because of provincial equalization payments. People are angry, and they are scared. They are only going to get more angry and more scared until your government proves that it will stand for the interests of people who live in the towns you’ve never heard of, people who voted against you out of fear and people for whom the fate of the energy sector means everything.
Your obligation is to every Canadian. The ones who voted for you intentionally. The ones who voted for you, but only out of fear of a right-wing government. The ones who bought stickers that curse your name before you even got into office. The ones who love you because they believe in your message and the ones who feel their agricultural tariffs have gone unnoticed by your government. The ones who support you as the lesser of evils and the ones who hate you because they’ve been radicalized.
Every single Canadian.
I have a feeling that listening to the voices of the people who fear you will do more for Canadian sovereignty than a visit from King Charles. I am praying for your success. Not in politics, but in leading.
What is equalization?
The point of equalization, which is a constitutionally entrenched program of the federal government, is to make sure that all provinces can provide a comparable level of public services (health care, education, etc.) regardless of the size of their economy. The funds dispersed to recipient provinces come from federal tax revenues, and we all pay the same rates of federal tax regardless of where we live. Provincial governments do not “pay into” the program.
Whether a province receives equalization funds depends on its “fiscal capacity.” Fiscal capacity is basically how much revenue a province would bring in if it taxed its residents at the average rate of all 10 provinces.
So it’s true in a way that residents of B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have some of their federal tax dollars spent in ways that don’t directly benefit them (though there are indirect benefits of having relatively similar social service levels across provinces). For Albertans, about 4.7 cents of every dollar the federal government collects from us is sent to other provinces. But here’s the thing: this is normal in our country. Residents of big cities tend to pay more into provincial revenues than they receive back in direct services. Urbanites essentially subsidize public services in rural areas. And the denser “core” areas of those cities similarly “subsidize” the outlying neighbourhoods.
If we started insisting that we’ll never pay (a modest amount) into a program where we don’t receive back exactly equal value, we’d fracture into mere atoms. Living in a community means that we share costs. It applies to your family, your church, your city, your province, your country. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Michael DeMoor is a professor in the Politics, History and Economics program at the King’s University in Edmonton.
Thanks, Michael, for the information. I also support your contention (as a matter of faith) that I don’t “pay-in-order-to-get-back.”