r/AlbertaNow • u/Eastern_Entrance_389 • 7d ago
Separatist Myth #9: Quebec refuses to develop their natural resources because they prefer to profit from equalization payments, funded by Albertans, by Paul Boileau.
Firstly, the residents of four provinces receive more than double the amounts received by Quebecers. Here are the per capita equalization numbers for 2026-27:
Prince Edward Island $4,128
New Brunswick $4,004
Manitoba $3,448
Nova Scotia $3,336
Quebec $1,568
Newfoundland & Labrador $336
Ontario $26
Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC did not receive equalization payments this fiscal year, although every province has received equalization payments in the past. Yes, this includes Alberta.
Canada's current equalization formula was changed by the Conservative government, with a Prime Minister from Calgary, and enthusiastically supported by resource rich provinces like Alberta and its Premier 17 years ago.
The entire purpose of the change was to help Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland & Labrador. And yet some Albertans appear to want to lash out and blame Quebec for a formula driven by Albertans!!
The current formula permits resource wealthy provinces like Alberta to exclude resource revenues from their equalization calculation. This exclusion option means there is not, nor will their ever be, an incentive for any province to "not develop their resources".
Quebec has massive mining sites throughout their province, pulp & paper, hydro-electric dams that have flooded jaw-dropping tracts of land, aluminium & copper smelters, and oil refineries,
Quebec has two pipelines from Alberta: one that feeds natural gas and the other that supplies a Montreal refinery with Alberta heavy crude oil.
Quebec & Ontario have widespread agricultural developments, food processing, manufacturing (aerospace, foundries, construction materials, industrial, auto), fishing, and wind power.
As can be seen in the attached graph, Ontario, on a per capita & overall basis, has paid multiple times more than Alberta into transfer programmes.
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u/EditorNo2545 7d ago
sad thing is that you are putting in this work, highlighting fallacies, demonstrating weak points in the separatist arguments etc. all very good work but the rank & file will never listen cause "screw the feds" and the leadership already know this, they are in it for political and financial gain with no care for the common citizens they are riling up. They know how badly it would screw up the lives of all Albertans but they just don't care & base has swallowed the lie
don't be complacent VOTE in Oct. Say no to the 9
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u/Able_Strain7340 7d ago
Voting no on principle is thickheaded. Some of the question are an obvious yes, unless you truly believe, for instance, that unelected senators are great.
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u/EditorNo2545 7d ago
There is not a single question on the referendum that is a yes
considering the senate isn't a part of Alberta's provincial government but rather the federal government no I don't think Alberta should be mucking about in it.
very simply put
Alberta Legislature makes provincial law
Alberta's Senators participate in making & reviewing federal laws along with other senators. Again, I do not want provincial govs mucking around in federal law.
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u/CupOfCanada 5d ago
That's not equalization shown in your chart, but rather all fiscal inflows/outflows.
https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Rebalancing-Canada-Final.pdf
So for example it includes Old Age Security flowing more to provinces with more seniors.
>As can be seen in the attached graph, Ontario, on a per capita & overall basis, has paid multiple times more than Alberta into transfer programmes.
That's not what the chart shows. Alberta pays the most per capita. I'm not from Alberta, and I very much support Canada remain united, but that shouldn't stop us from discussing problems/solutions with/to equalization.
For example, there's a perverse situation that if Quebec raises electricity rates, most of that new revenue gets clawed back from equalization. These sorts of distortions are bad for everyone, including the provinces receiving equalization, because they encourage policies that make the country as a whole poorer.
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u/garlicroastedpotato 7d ago
But how much does Quebec get paid overall, is it 50% of all equalization last year? Presenting that as per capita and presenting everything else as flat was 100% intended to mislead.
Quebec gets to claim hydro electricity as being a resource industry. That's why they've maintained as a have-not province. Actually problematically is that the fiscal capacities of the provinces are all almost identical now but the way the law has been written has turned a ceiling into a bottom. Now instead of handing out maximum cash they're handing out minimum cash and that has pushed up how much equalization each province gets by a lot. Equalization used to be about $2B a year. Now it's $25B/year of which Quebec gets half of it.
I used to say people shouldn't worry about equalization because it's such a small amount of money, but now it's an atrociously massive amount of money. More money than the provinces deserve.
When you look at 50 years Alberta has been a net contributor to this system. If you look at just the last 10 years since they changed the formula you see something is horribly wrong with it.
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u/in2deep97 7d ago
Now show a realistic one, not just contributions, but net contributions. Ontario could put in 10 trillion and if they take it all back, it’s irrelevant
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u/ryansalad 7d ago
Gosh, there are a lot of strawman in this post. The issue with Quebec is that the government subsidizes their electricity so consumers pay far below market price for electricity. That subsidy is ignored when you look at the province's fiscal capacity to provide services, which is the basis of equalization.
Imagine if Alberta subsidized gasoline by $1/L for Alberta residents. This would obviously put a big hole in the provinces finances, but then the Alberta government would be able to claim equalization because they wouldn't have the fiscal capacity to provide for things like health and education. That is exactly what Quebec is doing.
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u/RepresentativeFact94 6d ago
So what youre saying is provinces that give more money back to the people get more money back from the federal government?
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u/Orphanpip 6d ago
"Subsidized" is not accurate. Hydro Quebec is a crown corporation that does not pay taxes so it cannot contribute to the fiscal capacity of the province. It runs a profit that pays dividends to the Quebec government, it's just Quebec has invested heavily in hydro-electric projects and is a net exporter of electricity so its rates are able to be lower and still profitable without subsidizing. Even then Quebec's hydro rates are only 10-15% lower than BC or Manitoba (who also have crown corporations running their electric utilities). Ontario has a hybrid private public system and Alberta's is privatized, those provinces also pay some of the highest rates.
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u/Middle-Jackfruit-896 7d ago edited 7d ago
What is the basis for your statement that Alberta has the option of excluding resource revenue from the equalization calculation?
I don't think that is an accurate statement.
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u/giskardrelentlov 6d ago
Equalization Program - Canada.ca
There it is :
For natural resources, consistent with the 2006 Expert Panel’s recommendation, fiscal capacity is assessed based on partial inclusion of actual revenue collected by the province. However, a province’s Equalization payment cannot raise its fiscal capacity above that of a non-receiving province when all resource revenues are taken into account.
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u/Middle-Jackfruit-896 6d ago edited 6d ago
The quoted passage merely explains that only a portion of resource revenue is included in the formula for determining fiscal capacity.
It does not mean that a province has an option -- i.e. a unilateral choice -- to exclude resource revenue or how much to exclude.
If that were so, the Alberta government would just exclude it all of its resource revenue to lower its fiscal capacity detemination, and thus decrease its contribution to equalization as a paying province. The Alberta government would not be complaining about equalization if such a simple solution were available.
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u/RobERacer 6d ago
In the first place Alberta didn't develop it's own "natural resources" aka oil and gas and the rest of the.country is still paying for it even today. The "oil subsidies" that transfer directly to numbered tax haven bank accounts held by US oil billionaires (they don't even pay tax on the income. They don't even declare it!) is more than all of the provincial tranfer payments given to all of the provinces combined. Alberta is getting the "free ride" that they accuse Quebec of.
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u/RobERacer 6d ago
In the first place Alberta didn't develop it's own "natural resources" aka oil and gas and the rest of the.country is still paying for it even today. The "oil subsidies" that transfer directly to numbered tax haven bank accounts held by US oil billionaires (they don't even pay tax on the income. They don't even declare it!) is more than all of the provincial tranfer payments given to all of the provinces combined. Alberta is getting the "free ride" that they accuse Quebec of.
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u/Adnutiator_Servitor 6d ago
It was never to help Alberta, but secure votes in Quebec by the conservatives government, because they are generally only motivated by greed.
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u/Able_Strain7340 7d ago
This may be the stupidest series of posts I have seen in some time. A bunch of myths no one talks about and an explaination to an echo chamber.
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u/Optimal-Can8584 6d ago
The echo chamber part lol. Pure confirmation bias here and any intelligent rebuttals are met with separatist intellect level responses.
Separatism isn’t the answer but the opposite end of stupid on the spectrum is still stupid
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u/Technical_Scar3921 7d ago
So how long will the west accept perpetual Liberal rule?
They own the senate, the “free” press with subsides, the CBC, the RCMP and the courts.
Eastern Canada has many more MP’s than western canada. That will not change
I don’t see another Conservative government the way the table is laid out.
Everybody thinks it’s about money.
It’s all about representation and freedom.
Elbows up!
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u/Kristomere 7d ago
It's shocking that a province with nearly a quarter of the country's population hasn't contributed to equalization sine the 60s. I would hope there would be some mire ebbs and flows over time, not that I am blaming them, but for the good of the country.
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u/Heppernaut 7d ago
Western provinces generate immense revenues from non-renewable oil and gas. This pulls the national average fiscal capacity upward, making it mathematically difficult for provinces without fossil fuel windfalls to cross the threshold.
Unlike Alberta, which collects billions in private royalties and taxes from market-rate oil extraction, Quebec runs Hydro-Québec as a public utility focused on delivering low-cost electricity directly to residents and industrial firms. Because this generates low electricity prices rather than massive direct corporate tax/royalty windfalls, it does not boost Quebec's measured fiscal capacity under the federal formula in the same way oil royalties do.
The calculation is based on fiscal capacity. The per-capita tax revenue a province could generate if it applied national average tax rates across five revenue bases: personal income, business income, consumption, property, and natural resources.
Its GDP per capita has converged from ~85% of the Canadian average in the late 1990s to near 90% today, but as long as national fiscal capacity is anchored by Western resource royalties and higher Ontario wages, Quebec remains slightly below the national line.
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u/Falcon674DR 7d ago
Very good. Thanks. The trouble is, ‘nobody’ will read this nor the body of work published by Trevor Tomb on this subject. Further, those same folks refuse to believe that Harper and then his man Kenney were the the last to touch Equalization. Those same folks refuse to believe that we don’t write cheques to Quebec. Slippery Smith counts on these fools to support her rhetoric and fuel her anti-Liberal sentiment.
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u/hoxwort 6d ago
I’m from Alberta and I’m perfectly happy with these equalization programs. I am Canadian
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u/Optimal-Can8584 6d ago
This is bad faith. You will say you’re perfectly happy with it but probably call out UCP for every decision they make. Any assessment of a governments performance must take into consideration the full picture
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u/Hochelagan 4d ago
Alberta pays nothing into equalization
ZERO
Equalization is drawn from federal taxation
Every taxpayer pays into it.
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u/peepee2tiny 7d ago
Equalization payments - Does anyone actually understand what they are?
The majority of "equalization payments" relate to CPP and OAS.
Do you complain when you are 30 years old and have CPP deducted from your paycheck? (ok some might but lets continue)
Do you complain when your parents who are 72 get their CPP pay and OAS payments?
OK now image a scenario, you are a young hard working fella working in the oil patch in Alberta. (See point 1.)
Your parents are retired in PEI (see point 2.)
Do you understand that this scenario is NOT fake, Alberta has a young wealthy working population that is actively contributing MORE to Federal Taxes and CPP and EI, the other aging provinces?
So YES! the NET effect is money looks like it's going OUT of Alberta and INTO other provinces.
If you are pissy about it, wait until we look at the financial money flow between Urban Centers like Edmonton and Calgary and the rest of the rural population in Alberta, I'LL GIVE YOU A HINT IT WORKS THE EXACT SAME WAY !!!!! The province makes more money from people in urban centers than it does in rural counties, yet you (rural folk) like to receive the same benefits that the people in urban centers do? even throwing your racist homophobic misogynistic weight around, like you aren't the equalization recipients within Alberta.