Proposition 11: Equalization Payments

I’ve always been an egalitarian at heart, in that I think that as long as everybody has enough to go around, people should be able to share their wealth without really thinking too hard about it.

I don’t expect provinces who have more to bankrupt themselves in order to pay other provinces, but the whole point of the equalization payments are that some provinces happen to have a lot of natural resources which are valuable, while others don’t.

The only question that this proposition leaves me is how much equalization payments actually are currently, information which isn’t given in the question. Another piece of info that’s missing from the question is what these equalization payments actually go towards, which is pretty important context I think a lot of people lack when thinking about these payments and their importance to the provinces which receive them.

Provinces like Alberta with their oil and gas deposits aren’t wealthier because of their wild business savvy and economic acumen, it’s because of those resources that Alberta is richer, and I believe Canada and Canadians should have access to that richness too.

Summary: There’s a lot of info missing about the amounts of equalization payments going to provinces, and what this money is actually used for. This would be very helpful to put the question in context, and to decide whether voters in a given province think they should continue (and increase or decrease).

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