EDMONTON – Expressing their appreciation for the purchasing the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline, the Alberta government said thanks by complaining about how much Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and other have-not provinces receive in equalization payments.
The recognition for the $4.5 billion pipeline, which was paid collectively through federal revenues including places like Ontario and Quebec, came in the form of a traditional Albertan ‘fuck you’ to subsection 36(2) of the Canadian constitution.
“Albertans have not received anything out of this program for a long time,” said Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci whose provincial oilsands industry received one of the largest federal buyouts in Canadian history to ensure a pipeline construction. “We shouldn’t be punished because we have the highest income per capita in all of Canada that we’ve earned by happening to live on one of the world’s largest oil deposits.”
The federal government’s contribution to the Trans Mountain pipeline is 13 times greater than its contribution to Quebec-based Bombardier bailout last year, a point that many Albertans have acknowledged by implying Quebec is always given the most in transfer payments because they want to be special.
Had the have-not provinces not been so lazy, according to Ceci, their oil industries would have already received $3.1 billion in subsidies and tax breaks from Canada’s central government this year.
Working with have-provinces like Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, the Albertan Finance Minister demanded changes to the federal transfer system, unless federal money was being transferred to construct a risky, environmentally questionable energy project in his home province.
“Transferring federal money to help out the less fortunate provinces with health care and social spending?” rhetorically asked Ceci. “Uh, we’re not a radical left-wing party like the NDP; we’re the Alberta NDP.”
