This is a mugging.. Gimme da money !

Sask. will sue over equalization: Calvert

Ok. The Canadian Taxpayer gets about 2500$ more or less from the government , in terms of hospitals, roads, law inforcement , all the infrastructure stuff, if you add it all up and divide by the number of people in a particular province.

Except that it turns out Ontario and Quebec get more than that , because they're fairly affluent , rich provences. And Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia spend considerably less than that , because they're poor and have little source of income.

In order to balance this out , the federal government decided it would take some money from the rich provinces and give it to the poor , and everyone would get about the same level of hospitals and police and roads and schools and other infrastructure stuff.

Ding ! Oil discovered in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. Suddenly they're rich and have more money than Ontario and Quebec.

So the federal government decides they dont' need the equalization payments anymore. Because it's not equil , you're now taking money from provinces that have less than you (ontario and quebec) and giving to provinces that have more (Nova Scotia and Saskatchwan)

Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan's response ?

YOU CAN'T DO THAT WE'RE GONNA SUE YOU PROMISED BLAH BLAH BLAH ...

This is amugging. Gimme the money. We don't care that we're now richer than you. Pay up. Or else !


The Saskatchewan government will also argue the constitutional principle that natural resources belong to the people of Saskatchewan and the current equalization program violates that principle.


THAT OIL IS OURS ! YOU CAN'T TOUCH IT ! WE SHOULD COUNT AS BEING POOR BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO INCLUDE IT IN OUR INCOME !

Huh ? If I told the feds I was working under the table for 20k a year I don't think they'd buy the argument that that money is mine and they can't touch it.


There is another interesting point in this debate. And that is the role of bloggers.
If you examine the news articles on this matter, most of them make the federal government out to be bandits who are ripping off Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan some how. Only when some blogger digs deeper into the issue and figures out whats really going on do you realize it is in fact the reverse.

So the "proffessional Journalist" , although he's not technically lying , is leaving you with an impressino that he knows to be false, and the blogger is giving you the real low down on the situation.

And there are lots of proffesionals out there calling us bloggers amatures and we are a bane to the existance of the internet etc etc.

Let me respond to that accusation.

"Proffesional Paid Journalists" are highly slanted, have to be careful of who's toes they step on (or they get fired) and often get political views handed down from high for them to write on , and the old "do as your paid to do or I fire you " now kicks into place.

Bloggers have no such influences over them.

No where is this "proffesionalism" more obvious than in the string of articles about these equalization payments on the cbc.ca news site. I must put it to you that "professional paid journalists" cannot escape a slanted point of view, they must always be mindful of where the money is coming from to pay the rent , lest it be cut off. Yes I know, every editor in the world denies this. But the results speak otherwise. And it is the editors giving these journalists their marching orders.