Proposed Alberta separation referendum question approved

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

https://unrollnow.com/status/2024498777894076532

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

You are absolutely allowed to leave Canada. You just can’t take a chunk of it with you.

As for the constitution, it’s true: it’s very hard to change. Too hard. That needs to change — for everybody’s sake. The country needs a better amending formula — one that is based on the consent of the people, not the consent of the premiers.

But whatever formula is chosen, it can never be the case that one part of the country can impose constitutional changes on the rest of the country merely by voting on it — or legislating it. It’s wrong, and unconstitutional, when the government of Quebec does it, or purports to. And it’s just as wrong when the government of Alberta does it. Or purports to. Constitutional change, of any kind, can only be the result of a broad consensus across the country. That’s especially true of the kind of constitutional change that would be required to break up the country.

A final point, which has been made a thousand times, but it seems needs to be made a thousand more: equalization is not unfair to Alberta. It’s a screwed-up, dysfunctional, politicized program that doesn’t actually equalize. But it’s not paid for by Alberta, and it’s not an interprovincial revenue-sharing program. It’s a federal spending program paid for by federal taxpayers. Even as federal taxpayers, Albertan’s don’t pay into it disproportionately. They face exactly the same schedule of tax rates as taxpayers in the rest of the country. The people who pay disproportionately for it are richer people. They’re supposed to: that’s how a progressive income tax works. All these feverish calculations of how much more Albertans pay into the federal treasury than other Canadians are only a statement of how much richer Albertans are, on average, than other Canadians — a blessing, and a burden, they have in common with Canadians in, for example, midtown Toronto, who also pay “disproportionately” for equalization and other federal programs, only without the same vast industry devoted to showing how hard done by they are.
The only way in which you could say that equalization treats Alberta “differently” than other provinces is that its government does not qualify, and has never qualified, for equalization payments. But that’s not discrimination either — there’s no law that says “Alberta shall not be eligible for equalization payments.” The reason it does not receive equalization is because it is, by far, the richest province in the country, with by far the highest per capita revenues — even without a provincial sales tax. Equalization is messed up enough, but an equalization program that paid out to the richest province in the federation would be completely insane.
Maybe we shouldn’t have a progressive income tax. Maybe we shouldn’t have an equalization program. I happen to think we need both, albeit in substantially modified form, but those are legitimate questions for debate. What’s not legitimate is pretending that equalization is some kind of scam against Alberta. What’s even less legitimate is pretending you can abolish or reform a federal program by a referendum in one province. And what’s least legitimate of all is invoking the failure of that non-solution to a non-problem as justification for the constitutional nonsense of secession — which, to repeat, is the proposition that you can not only leave Canada, but take a piece of it with you.