|
The Ottawa Liberals only won 14 of the 88 Western seats in the November 2000 election. But the Liberals are past masters
in dealing with separatists. They are going to treat the west to some tough love just like they did in Quebec.
They
could:
Build fountains in rivers.
Give HRDC grants and huge bank loans to struggling golf courses and
hotels in Alberta.
Send Heritage Minister Sheila Copps as a special representative to teach those unworthy westerners
about national parks, true Canadian heritage and tough love.
Send about a hundred trainloads of new refugee claimants
to the West in order to impress those westerners that Canada is a bilingual multicultural country according to the Charter
of Rights.
On the last day of the parliamentary session, just before the 3-month summer break, at about the time
that MPs usually improve their pay and pensions, also proclaim a new improved and environmentally sensitive National Energy
Program. Or better still, do it by order in council in the middle of the summer when everyone out west is busy on the farm.
It will all be forgotten by late September when parliament resumes.
Improve the Access to Information Act so that
those busy-body journalists cannot access anything the Liberals are doing. That way everything will be quiet and peaceful
and no messy questions about HRDC or the missing billion in parliament.
Open at least ten more CBC radio stations
in Alberta broadcasting in French.
Send Jane Stewart and her HRDC ministry to Calgary and when half the city of
Calgary is employed at HRDC, all that western alienation will just disappear.
|
|
THESE EQUALIZATION PAYMENTS SHOULD BE PUT TO CANADIANS
IN A REFERENDUM
One of the reasons why Canadians are the most brutally taxed individuals in the industrialized world
is because Canada's "have" provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia give $10.4 billion a year to the "have not"
provinces. Quebec receives $5.5 billion a year in these equalization payments even though the Quebec government is a separatist
government, has its own tax system, its own Immigration Department, its own Quebec Pension Plan, its own provincial police,
its own unilingualism (no bilingualism in Quebec -- not even translation into English in the Quebec parliament) and did not
sign onto Trudeau's Charter of Rights -- which shows that some people in Quebec are quite clever. It also shows they know
how to extort $billions annually from the federal government and the "have" provinces. Quebec also seems to be the permanent
home of almost all Canadian prime ministers.
Subservient Canadians never ask why Quebec should receive such favored
treatment. It is not politically correct.
"Make yourself into a lamb," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "and someone will make himself
into a wolf."
Nova Scotia receives $1.4 billion annually in equalization payments and Newfoundland receives $1.1 billion
annually. It is apparent in recent years that both Newfoundland and Nova Scotia will soon be receiving a windfall of cash
because of oil wells found on the ocean floor. According to the present formula for receiving equalization payments, this
would eventually reduce equalization payments to these provinces as the oil revenue increases. But these provinces want the
level of equalization payments to be maintained regardless of the incoming oil revenues.
Mike Harris, when he was premier
of Ontario, said, "That's like somebody on welfare saying, 'Well I won the $1 million lottery and I have a $100,000 job but
I still want my welfare.'"
Equalization payments have not even slowed down Quebec separatism and now these equalization
payments have brought us the extra dimension of western alienation from the "have" provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.
Equalization payments have also turned Nova Scotia and Newfoundland into pushy welfare recipients. These are not good unity
symptoms.
The Federal Government has stayed out of this problem because they want everyone in Canada to be completely
subservient and dependent on them.
There is a way around this problem if the subservient Canadians have the balls
to do it.
Proper equalization would mean that the present equalization payments should be put in the form of a referendum
question to all Canadians -- it never was when the payments were introduced. All provinces should have what Quebec presently
has and more -- tax system, language laws, pension plan, complete provincial medicare, provincial police, immigration department
and no inter provincial trade barriers.
This would mean a constitutional conference in the near future -- something
that the Liberals dread. The federal government should download at least 90% of its expensive bureaucracies to the provinces.
The provinces should collect all taxes and then send a cheque to Ottawa to support a much smaller federal government instead
of the other way around. This proposal could keep the country united. Don't hold your breath.
These equalization payments
are the reasons why Canadians are unable to pay down the heavy national debt -- $600 billion and counting -- and why the Canadian
dollar has recently dipped to 63 cents US.
Keep the faith.
Click here for Web Poetry Corner
|
