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Ontario is becoming a "have-not" province (pg. 2)
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| swilly |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
1) Welfare is the biggest piece of the pie in federal tax spending;
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Source, I find this hard to believe.
swilly |
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| swilly |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
It's time to get rid of the equalization system once and for all. |
Right and allow the other canadians in this nation to suffer. Canada is a country and all canadians have the right to a basic standard of living.
There are some areas that i agree people should not live however, letting them suffer is not right.
swilly |
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| MarkT |
http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr/2004/afr04_1e.html#Expenses
scroll halfway down...while transfer payments to "persons" is in fact the largest piece of the pie, that figure includes all sorts of things like EI and CPP payments. So it looks like "welfare", in the strictest sense of the word (i.e. people on social assistance, not just EI, pensioners, etc) is NOT the largest expense.
So...it looks like the biggest piece of the pie is actually servicing our debt. How sad is that... |
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Originally posted by swilly
Right and allow the other canadians in this nation to suffer. Canada is a country and all canadians have the right to a basic standard of living.
There are some areas that i agree people should not live however, letting them suffer is not right.
swilly |
It's clear that you have no idea what the equalization program is. |
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| swilly |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
It's clear that you have no idea what the equalization program is. |
The equalization programme is a programme where in the federal government takes tax revenue from the economic "engines" of the nation such as ontario and alberta and to a lesser extent BC and transfers this money to provinces experiencing economic problems such as the east coast quebec and the north.
This money is used by those provinces for various projects established by thier governments.
At present quebec recieves alot of money but it was not always this way.
At the end of the day though this money is used at some level to provide a similar standard of living across the country through the creation of economic development projects and provision of social programmes.
william |
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| ShadoWolf |
Closer, but still incorrect.
| quote: | Originally posted by swilly
The equalization programme is a programme where in the federal government takes tax revenue from the economic "engines" of the nation such as ontario and alberta and to a lesser extent BC and transfers this money to provinces experiencing economic problems such as the east coast quebec and the north. |
Money is transferred to PROVINCES to spend as they wish. "East coast Quebec" and "the north" are not provinces. That money is NOT earmarked for poor regions or poor individuals.
| quote: | | At present quebec recieves alot of money but it was not always this way. |
Quebec has been the largest beneficiary of the program - by far. And yet, is Quebec a "poor" province? Not really. So why do they get that money? The entire program is political and corrupt.
| quote: | At the end of the day though this money is used at some level to provide a similar standard of living across the country through the creation of economic development projects and provision of social programmes.
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No, the money goes into the provinces' general revenues and can be spent on anything. The program does not help poor INDIVIDUALS.
Here's the preeminent paper on fiscal transfers:
http://www.cabe.ca/cbe/vol3_2/32-mansell.pdf
There are many problems with the program.
1. It's bad for national unity.
-Support for Alberta separation is at an all-time high.
-It stokes the humiliation of Alberta that goes back to the colonial National Policy and National Energy Program.
-Despite receiving billions of dollars, support for separation remains high in Quebec.
2. It creates perverse incentives.
-Saskatchewan is has some of the richest deposits of natural resources in Canada. Yet it has chosen to keep those resources in the ground because exploiting those resources would decrease their equalization receipts.
3. It creates poverty.
-Industrial development in Atlantic Canada has been stunted due to equalization.
4. It's open to political manipulation and corruption.
5. It doesn't solve the problem it was supposed to fix.
-Atlantic Canada is still poor after all these years.
It's time to get rid of equalization once and for all. |
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| charmscars |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
Closer, but still incorrect.
Money is transferred to PROVINCES to spend as they wish. "East coast Quebec" and "the north" are not provinces. That money is NOT earmarked for poor regions or poor individuals.
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come on, you are arguing semantics. Do you really believe when he said "east coast' 'north' etc, it was b/c he thought monies were transferred regionally? Clearly he was speaking about provinces within these regions.
there are better ways to prove a point then to nitpick. |
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| miketg23 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
The answer to that would depend on the reason for their economy being in such bad shape.
The tax/benefit gap exists in Ontario because:
1) Welfare is the biggest piece of the pie in federal tax spending;
2) Ontario pays more taxes than any other province (with the possible exception of Alberta); and
3) Unemployment rates are fairly low in most parts of Ontario.
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1) Welfare is governed by the provinces. EI, which is federally opperated, actually has been maintaing a surplus for quite a few years now.
2) Alberta has the lowest income taxes of any provinces, and are even toying with the idea of eliminating provincial income tax all together.
3) yes very true.
I do agree that we in Ontario pay more than our share, but this is Canada. We have built the greatest country by working together. One day Ontario may not be the richest province in the country. Hopefully the help we have provided will not be forgotten on the east coast as easily as it has been by Alberta. Energy is a necessity to our society, and therefore we should have a national energy policy as earlier said. "Alberta's oil" should be included obviously. |
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| Pettiscool |
| will it help if i sign up for unemployment ? |
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| malek |
ugh, Ontario a have not province is complete bs.
There's no need to waste time looking at budgets and other figures, you need to understand how the equalization system works and right away you'll understand that its almost impossible for Ontario to be a "have not".
Why? Ontario in population is almost the half of Canada, so in order to be a "have not", the whole _other_ half of the country has to get suddenly richer than Ontario, which is almost impossible.
As for Quebec being the biggest winner of equalization, *sigh*. I think i posted this a dozen times on this forum.
Quebec seems the biggest winner if you look at the total amount of dollars recieved by province. But if you divide that by the population, you get a much different picture, i.e. almost 500$ per person a year wich is magnitude lower than other provinces.
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| mercure |
It's fine to reference papers and all, and everyone has their own opinion.
But, to state that CABE's paper is "preeminent", without some kind of qualifier, just makes you seem an ideologue praising the paper because it reflects your own belief. There are a huge number of very good analyses that have been put out on fiscal issues, reflecting a range of views. Given one of the authors (Mansell) connections with Stephen Harper, Preston Manning, the old Reform Party etc., you can hardly say he has an objective or neutral position.
Someone else could equally as validly claim a paper from the opposite end of the spectrum, say the Polaris Institute or Centre for Policy Alternatives, to be the one unimpeachable source. Or, for that matter, you could point to the work of individual economists like John Richards or Pierre Fortin. It's all subjective without some kind of reasonable argument. |
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| Tranceplanted |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
When alberta was a dustbowl of , ontario was there. Now that the tides of turned they are hoarding the wealth.
National Energy Policy the Sequal sounds pretty good to me :) |
This isn't entirely an entirely fair comment, as someone who grew up in Alberta during both the bad and good times, I can say that overall it sucked, but at least there was a goal in sight that was tangible.
Klein for all his inadequacies had the balls to take advantage of a good economic swing and make the hard decisions to get rid of the deficit and debt, knowing full well that it wouldn't last forever. He did not succumb to pressure to increase spending as everyone around him said that the healthcare system and education system were falling to pieces. There was a clear goal and he delivered on it, although now it remains to be seen if they can figure out how to create more economic success without relying on the energy pricing inflation.
Although he had a lot of help doing it, I don't see to many other provincial governements willing to take the flack, cut through the bull, and just own up to some fiscal responsibility. This is over simplified for the sake of brevity, but more or less it's the way I see it. |
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