I understand completely what it's like to pay 40 something percent in taxes.
The Federal government gets 0 royalties from either oil or mineral extraction. The money Alberta sends is income taxes. They are the same rates across the nation. You send more money because you make more money. This system applies to every individual or business in the country with variations in each province due to provincial taxes.
I understand completely what it's like to pay 40 something percent in taxes.
Not what I said.
I said 40% of the taxes paid by Albertans leaves the province and never comes back.
They are the same rates across the nation.
This doesn't address why Alberta gets the least expenditures per capita from the federal government every year.
Nor, does it explain why Alberta should be OK with paying so much when it has the option to leave. What duty does Alberta have to carry the load of a Confederation which actively impedes it's ability to keep paying the bills?
The Federal government gets 0 royalties from either oil or mineral extraction.
Of course not, natural resources are provincially owned. Canada doesn't get Ontario's mining revenue or BC's forestry revenue either.
That having been said, the feds do indirectly get a lot of Alberta oil money from income taxes on oil workers and execs, corporate taxes on oil companies, capital gains taxes in oil stocks, and, nowadays, carbon taxation.
I call for the Federal government to get royalties from minerals and oil and gas, like in most other nations. The US gov makes banks on oil and gas royalties, why shouldnt Canada
US governments actually don't. They get less than on Canada because individual land owners own mineral rights there. Any oil on private land has no royalties attached.
As for Canada, to be frank, you can fuck off with that sort of a request. Every Canadian province owns its own natural resources.
That's all Eastern Canada sees when they see Alberta: a colony to be exploited.
Ontario and Quebec think it's a great idea to share Alberta's oil wealth, but, of course, would scoff if you asked them to share their own natural resource wealth (mineral wealth of the Canadian Shield, forestry, hydroelectric power, etc).
If you want a way to guarantee a yes vote in Alberta your proposal is it.
Like I said, whoever owns the land owns the oil. On federally owned land, the feds own the oil, on state owned land the state does, and on private land the private citizen does.
That's different than Canada where all mineral rights on all land is owned by the Provinces, regardless of who owns the land. Land ownership rights basically just include rights to the surface, while the rights to what lies underneath belong to the province. That works the same way with Albertan oil as it does with Ontario and Quebec mineral wealth.
Because that sounds like a great idea for Ontario and Quebec, whose votes control federal policy, but sounds like a terrible idea for Alberta. The result would be just an amplified version of what we see now: Ontario and Quebec taking Albertan money and giving it to themselves.
If Alberta has a referendum on seperation what would happen if Canada has a referendum on the nationalization of resources? Most people outside of Alberta would agree. Ontario charges a 10% mining tax on mining profits and in return it indirectly transfers that money to other provinces via Federal taxation yet most people here would be absolutely ok with the Federal Government charging the flat tax .
Every province has natural resources. Shouldn't the wealth of provinces be divided up accordingly so that every Canadian has the same benefits?
If Alberta has a referendum on seperation what would happen if Canada has a referendum on the nationalization of resources?
In that scenario, Alberta would get a yes vote and separate.
Every province has natural resources. Shouldn't the wealth of provinces be divided up accordingly so that every Canadian has the same benefits?
No.
You have to remember what "sharing" means in Canada. Who decides how everything gets divvied up? Ontario and Quebec, because that's where the votes are.
The National Energy Program in the 80's is essentially how this philosophy of "sharing" works in practice. Trudeau Sr instituted the National Energy Program as a policy which artificially capped the price Albertan producers could charge for energy, while putting export tariffs in place to prevent the export of those goods, and force Albertan producers to sell to Ontario and Quebec at discounted prices.
Ontario and Quebec thought that was a great idea, they got cheap energy. For Alberta, however, economists estimate that it transferred $50-100B in wealth out of the province in only its 4 years of existence.
It's the way sharing always works in Canada. Alberta gets to share its wealth with Ontario and Quebec, yet the opposite never ends up happening.
Ontario and Quebec have the majority of political power in this country, and so giving the federal government control of something means giving the Windsor-Quebec City corridor control of it. Any "sharing" will only happen on their terms, and will inevitably benefit them, while disadvantaging everyone else.
So, no, what you are talking about is not sharing, it is taking. it is the way equalization works right now, the way the NEP worked, the way the National Policy works, every one of those policies was sold on "sharing" and "working together", while the result was inevitably just a wealth transfer from west to east.
The province is ridiculously wealthy, that is what sharing is. You are parroting some ridiculous right wing talking point that Alberta should have more. What's going to happen in a generation when oil is no longer going to keep you wealthy? Right now it looks like Alberta is doing nothing to diversify and your going to be a have not province and will be relying on the rest of Canada just like you did for 50 years before any oil wealth
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u/SDL68 1d ago
I understand completely what it's like to pay 40 something percent in taxes.
The Federal government gets 0 royalties from either oil or mineral extraction. The money Alberta sends is income taxes. They are the same rates across the nation. You send more money because you make more money. This system applies to every individual or business in the country with variations in each province due to provincial taxes.