khtm

Funny you say that...Alberta actually has the highest percentage of millionaires in Canada.

But I see your point. I grew up in BC and have noticed that Albertans do like to bitch a lot...but I wasn't here when things were *bad* either so I have no perspective.

rotten42

It wasn't always easy here and the only reason why because of the work the people of Alberta have out into it...It has nothing to do with the Federal government. And we and anybody else has the right to bitch about scandals, taxes and equal fair representation under the government.


One of the reasons why things are so good here is because of all the cuts in spending we endured over the years to get our financial house in order...something many of the other provinces don’t have the stomach for.

Now it's paying off with more and more head offices moving to Calgary. We have the second lowest vacancy rate for commercial office space in the world next to Hong Kong (wait..it might have been Tokyo...I can’t remember precisely)

There are over 10 towers either approved or in the approval process to be built in the next 5 years.

khtm

To kinda change the subject...what's going on with Quebec? I have a few friends that moved to Calgary about 6 months ago from Montreal and they said the province is basically FVCKED.

Like there's so much debt, they get severely taxed, and the BQ is basically ruining the province.

I don't really know much about the situation...anyone else?

MrJynx

The bloc are an strange bunch of people. Remember, in Quebec they are predomently strict Roman Catholics outside of montreal. (i know because my mom is from quebec and she went to school at a convent!)

The french that I speak to (my family) all say they don't want to seperate from Canada, but at the same time they're pissed at the rest of Canada because of some stuff that happened in the past.

For instance, on their license plate it says "Je me souvins" which roughly translates to "I remember", but what are they remembering?? Well apparently during the 70's when the seperatist were getting pretty ansy (actually almost started a civil war) all of the major corporations that had their stuff in Montreal all took off out of the province because of the risk of seperation. That move basically destoyed the economy in Montreal..

The bloc are an interesting bunch and they don't have any clear ties with other parties, they consider issues on a case by case basis so they have no allegiance to anyone..

But I guess you have to live in that particular province to get a better understanding as to what the social and economic issues are. Which may also explain the huge differences between Alberta and Ontario


MrJynx

ddoroslovac

I think I hate myself for living in Ontario now... Kidding... Just remember that we are ALL Canadians and despite our demographic differences, we can appreciate that this country is a beautiful place to drive our 8’s in.

herbert

Not to mention that all of us will be collectively cheering on the Cdn Olympic hockey team(s) in a few weeks.

khtm

Except if you're driving in Edmonton

rotten42

true...true

moRotorMotor

What's wrong with Edmonton? Do they have a lot of snow?

rotten42

Edmonton is a part of Canada...the part that you sit on!!

DarkBrew

I was living in Quebec in the '70s and we were among the people who "emigrated to Canada" as our Ontario based friends would say. After the FLQ incidents in Quebec and Trudeau using the war powers act and when our school was invaded by gun toting separtists and then the language law was passed we all figured it was time to leave. The Quebec economy is in the state it is because of the separtist movement.

BTW, Rotten42, your 199 list should be required reading before the next election. Did you send it to Harper?

Shamblerock

I've had politics served at the dinner table along with the bread and butter every night for 20 years living in Montreal. It didn't matter what function you were at, politics came up and consumed the conversation. Ayt least in Toronto, we don't really care who's in charge because we historically had the economic might.

Looking for tomorrow, maybe its best that someone from the West leads the country so they can pull Alberta's oil out of the ground and have us as the number one oil producers on the globe. They currently have the largest reserves, so why not. At least that way, we'll get cheap gas and be able to cruise more with the 8's.

It doesn't matter who won, who ever is in power will pull a scandal of some sort or the press will take a small incident and call it a scandal. We have very poor leadership and have had poor leadership for many many years.

The one thing I hate most about a leader is a weakling who panics and pretends we are all ignorant. Paul Martin for example. We need a leader with confidence and someone who will deliver what he says, no matter what, right or wrong. Just deliver what you say.

I doubt the new guy on 24 Sussex is going to be any better, but hell it sure seemed like we needed a change.

I would have given Rotten my vote in a heartbeat if he ran because he is so level headed and almost always makes sense. Consider running for PM in 4 years!

Chrissss

We'll never have cheap gas and other fuels as long as the FTA is in place. All gas has to be bought and sold on the open market so that all the rich folk can get richer...

Chris...

rotten42

Holly **** are you on drugs?!


Here's what it boils down to for me and why I'm a bit ticked at the East. If a government screws you over, you throw them out and give the next guy a shot. If he screws you over you then throw him out. If you keep repeating this, someday those political bozos are going to start to understand that they better represent us properly or get thrown out. It may take 4 or 5 elections but if the public is consistent in this approach it just might turn them around somewhat.



I just can;t support someone how is ripping me off over and over.

Agent008

Or, they just learn that they have to do a better job of hiding the corruption.

Fritz the Cat

Fred Kerr wrote a piece about Alberta's relationship with the rest of the country in the Jan 16 Globe and Mail.

A friend of mine emailed it to me. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of that issue, so I can't verify if my emailed version is accurate. Bear that in mind when you read.

=============================================
Canada's Clampetts and the golden goose



By FRED KERR

Monday, January 16, 2006

From Monday's Globe and Mail

The Economist magazine recently dubbed Alberta "Canada's very own Texas." It's not a perfect analogy. Many Canadians see Albertans as Canada's Clampett family.

The Beverly Hillbillies opened with "poor mountaineer" Jed Clampett "shootin' at some food,/ And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude./ Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea./ Well the first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire . . ."

Alberta is portrayed as merely lucky and, worse, selfish with its geological lottery winnings. Editors and politicians howl that Alberta must share. Most Canadians think natural resources, which are legally provincial property, belong to all Canadians.

Oddly, nobody has asked the obvious question: How much is Alberta sharing today?
Albertans are, indeed, fortunate to be living above a prehistoric seabed whose former inhabitants were pressure-cooked into hydrocarbons. British Columbians are blessed with vast forests, Saskatchewanians with uranium, Quebeckers with vast hydroelectric potential, Ontarians with nickel deposits, the Nunavut people with diamond-bearing kimberlites.

Canadians have invested a great deal of capital and ingenuity to unlock the value of these natural endowments. Finding and producing oil and gas is a little trickier than Jed Clampett's possum hunt.

Unlike Mr. Clampett, Albertans typically don't own the mineral rights to their land; they're mostly held by the provincial government. Explorers bid for mineral rights at competitive auctions.

Exploration costs can run to millions of dollars before anyone drills a hole: hiring geologists to identify locations, shooting and processing seismic surveys, building roads, and securing drilling rigs.

Drilling a well costs anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Most wells don't find oil or gas in commercially viable quantities. Unsuccessful wells are called "dry holes" or "dusters."

A former federal Liberal energy minister demonstrated his profound grasp of the business by asking his Alberta hosts, "Why would anyone drill a dry hole?"

Oil and gas exploration is educated guesswork, with odds of success as low as 10 per cent to 20 per cent for exploration, so dry holes are an expensive fact of life.

If drilling does locate hydrocarbons in viable quantities, the producer pays to connect her well to a gas plant or oil battery, whose owners may charge usurious processing fees. If there's no plant or pipeline nearby, the well owner must build one.

Production from a typical natural gas well declines at around 30 per cent a year, meaning profits must be reinvested in new wells to replace that lost production. The provincial government collects 20 per cent to 30 per cent of a well's gross revenue as royalties, which amounted to $13-billion in 2005.

Now comes the sharing. Alberta sends about $11-billion of that $13-billion to Ottawa, where the feds "invest" it in national defence, transfers to other provinces, gun registries, sponsorship programs, and regional opportunity agencies.

For all the talk of fiscal imbalance, the fact that Albertans carry a greater share of Canada's fiscal burden than citizens of any other province is not widely known.

Using The Economist's figures, each Albertan contributes 60 per cent more than each Ontarian and eight times what each British Columbian shares.

All other provinces are net recipients of transfers.

Economist Robert Mansell of the University of Calgary calculates that, in the past 40 years, Albertans have paid more than triple the per capita contribution made by citizens of any other province.

It's not that Albertans oppose sharing, but, in the face of massive government waste and occasional outright theft, many Albertans are not convinced that government is a wholly benevolent force, or even that Canada's high taxes are fundamental to a caring society.

Politicians love to overtax voters, then dole out our money to buy support. The sponsorship program, regional development

agencies and Alberta's prosperity bonus and natural gas rebates are examples.

Beyond government-sponsored sharing, Albertans also express their generosity philanthropically. Alberta is among the top three provinces for charitable donations and leads Canada in volunteerism.

Canadians might consider how else they benefit from Alberta's prosperity. The tens of billions invested in Alberta's oil sands are creating jobs, not just for the thousands who've flocked to Fort McMurray but also 1.7 million person-years of employment outside of Alberta over the next 20 years. Oil and gas stocks, which now make up fully a quarter of the TSX, have created much wealth for millions of Canadians. Alberta made major cutbacks in the early to mid-1990s, proving that fiscal prudence was politically viable in Canada. The province has always been innovative, as it demonstrated recently by reducing surgical wait times in the public system.

Albertans worry that the Liberals may be tempted to exploit Alberta envy and strangle the province's golden goose, as they did with the national energy program. That would be catastrophic. Without Alberta, Canada would be a much poorer place.

Fred Kerr is a former institutional stockbroker and past president of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute's Alberta chapter
=============================================

I just love the bit about how much we Albertans are paying compared to the rest of Canada. It really irks me when I think about how much power we have compared to what we pay.

Cheers!

khtm

Good read Fritz...

Now comes the sharing. Alberta sends about $11-billion of that $13-billion to Ottawa, where the feds "invest" it in national defence, transfers to other provinces, gun registries, sponsorship programs, and regional opportunity agencies.

For all the talk of fiscal imbalance, the fact that Albertans carry a greater share of Canada's fiscal burden than citizens of any other province is not widely known.

Using The Economist's figures, each Albertan contributes 60 per cent more than each Ontarian and eight times what each British Columbian shares.

All other provinces are net recipients of transfers.

Economist Robert Mansell of the University of Calgary calculates that, in the past 40 years, Albertans have paid more than triple the per capita contribution made by citizens of any other province.

Agent008

Once again, I love the west and Alberta especially, but here is my two cents on the article anyhow.

1. I have a bit of an issue the statement "each Albertan contributes 60 per cent more than each Ontarian". You see, it's the Provincial government that is handing over the money they they are receiving from the gas companies. You could claim that the 11b is the rightful property of the citizens but in the end the average Albertan does not pay 60% more of his/her hard earned money to the feds then people in Ontario do.

2. Not to take anything way from the good people in Alberta that give donations or volunteer time, but as khtm pointed out, Alberta has the most millionaires. So I would expect that Alberta would donate more time/money then less rich provinces.

rotten42

Like I said before, it's not just the oil that makes us rich. We’re the only province that had the ***** enough to get rid of both the deficit and debt. Yes oil helped but it also took the will power of the Albertan voter to keep re-electing a government that cut everything in site from the budget.

In. Calgary our population has grown considerably in the last 15 years yet we lost 3 hospitals. For years not a single inter-change was upgraded or built. Most new communities in Calgary don’t have schools.


Now that the debt and deficit is gone we have every right to spend that money here and take care of the things that had to be pushes aside until the finances were under control.

We pay our fair share. Other provinces don't by not having their budgets under control. Why finance people/governments that don't put the effort forward enough to be facially responsible?

BTW, it all has nothing to do with how many millionaires we have here.

Gord96BRG

1. That's how the numbers are calculated, on a per capita basis. It's the only fair way to determine the relative contributions of the provinces. I suppose it's not coming directly out of my pocket - but then again, if the Alberta government only contributed at the rate of the Ontario government, they'd have billions extra to spend on health care, education, parks, etc., and I wouldn't have to pay an annual Alberta Healtch Care premium, lower tuition and user fees, etc. Alberta balanced their budget by increasing costs to citizens, while still sending far more proportionately to Canada than Ontario.

2. There may be more millionaires, but come on, that would still be a miniscule fraction of the population. Remember back in 1988, when Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics and stunned the world by actually turning a profit hosting the games (that hadn't been done in decades for the Winter Olympics, and only the 84 LA Games had turned a profit in the Summers), but also amazed the world with how well organized they were and with the tremendous number of volunteers helping out? It was the volunteers who made a profit possible (which, by the way, is still being used today to maintain sports and training facilities for athletes in and around Calgary) - there were thousands and thousands of volunteers. Extremely few of us were (or are) millionaires! It's routinely stated that the volunteer spirit in the West goes way beyond that in other parts of the country, and it's the ordinary people who are the ones who like volunteering.