10 August 2020

Feedback from our readers to Ted Morton's article Equalization Payments

Canadians for Language Fairness (CLF) has entered a new stage in our ongoing effort to educate as many Canadians as we can on our favourite topic – the unfairness & total failure of the Official Languages Act (1969) which has given the province of Quebec far too much say in the governing of this large country (from Sea to Shining Sea). We are going to publicize the opinion of readers to articles and views concerning our topic – here is the 1st session:

The French (mainly Quebecois) have taken unfair advantage of the OLA to advance the power & influence of the French language & culture & the following article is just one example of how they’ve managed to get such a loud voice while being less than 20% of the population, concentrated in Quebec & New Brunswick. The very simple explanation is that the illegal (according to John Robson’s firm belief) 1982 Constitution has protected the French-speakers to a huge extent with a massive amounts of money & judicial support by manipulating the choice of judges. The English-speaking majority has NO support from the govt. at any level & the injustice has grown over the years.

The loud voices of the French activists can be heard right across the country & the Fear Factor has kept the Silent Majority unable to protest. However, now that we have the internet & people who can speak up anonymously, let’s exploit that new power & we will ensure that you will be heard.

Over 40 comments to article at this time https://nationalpost.com/news/nhl-hit-with-criticism-over-english-only-version-of-o-canada-on-saturday/wcm/49bce3cd-4bd1-46ef-a4ec-ac06db353c3c/

We were able to capture one comment (please feel free to capture more if you can):

5 DAYS AGO from Larry Eamer

Really!? This is what it has come to that even the most innocuous of perceived ‘slights’ is pounced on by perpetually aggrieved French-speaking Canadians as just another example of anglo intolerance. Quebec has essentially left confederation and, in the process, ‘encouraged’ the exodus of hundreds of thousands of the dreaded anglos with bigoted and discriminatory language laws. It’s time to put the national myth of two founding peoples to rest and put an end to the expensive disaster known as official bilingualism. Canada, outside of Quebec, is an English speaking nation with only a tiny fraction of a percentage actually speaking French at home yet Quebec still insists on wielding an inordinate amount of influence in Ottawa. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a political party or leader with the intestinal fortitude to confront the racists and bigots in la belle province and forge a new narrative for the RoC.

Larry Earner is not one of our readers – he’s just a guy who wrote in to the NP with his views. There are many more commentators – if you can be bothered to capture their views.

Kim

Just to give you an example – our last message circulated was Ted Morton’s article at this link:

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/morton-alberta-has-been-targeted-for-its-tax-dollars-by-design/wcm/ba5c8c11-6b85-44e3-a8c3-43fe58c0d365/

Morton: Alberta has been targeted for its tax dollars by design

The following comments came from our readers – I will reproduce them just to show you that we have very intelligent, well-informed readers who are willing to share their opinions:

The socialism that we have in Canada is "French Socialism". Even Marz and Engles in the Communist Manifesto describes French Socialism as a failure. It's the French who are the problem. Central Canada will be bankrupt when we separate.

Deke M.

As long as the federal government collects the taxes and distributes them through transfers including 'equalization' back to the provinces the unfairness will continue. Obviously if Alberta had put some portion of the money it paid out in equalization over the years into some type of rainy day fund it would not need money from anyone. Sadly over the years the provinces have allowed the feds to usurp powers that were once in their domain. Provincial premiers and their governments have not always worked in the best interests of the people they should have been serving.

Olsen O. from MB

I wholeheartedly agree Alberta has been targeted, although I wouldn't entirely agree that the concept of transfer payments is entirely bad. I would say the implementation is just a tool of the Laurentians to pig out off the rest of the country, but fundamentally there is a logic to using a portion of surplus in one area to invest in increasing productivity in others. Companies do this all the time. Tesla leveraged sales of the roadster to build the model S, and all that has fed back into battery research which is giving them a market dominance in battery tech.

The problem with the transfer payment program is it's like alimony, or funding indigenous tribes. There's no oversight to ensure the investment is actually wise or likely to yield any improvement. The only thing it creates is dependency because there's no onus of responsibility or threat of consequence for failure to succeed.

The transfer program would produce real results if it was not handed back to the provinces, but was instead used as a metric for how investments should be targeted.

It also needs to take into account a normalizing factor to account for the different social benefits in each region. What they should do is the central authority which decides how to manage the investment should be composed exclusively of representatives from the provinces which are paying the bill. Then you would see real progress because the provinces paying the tab have a real inventive to want to ensure the realization of a real increase in average GDP per capita of unproductive regions.

We have to view our world in terms of an organism. One world, many countries. One country, many provinces. One province, many municipalities. etc, etc.

While on an individual level, we recognize that a neighbor's actions may be malicious (a.k.a. cancerous), that doesn't mean that it's not part of a whole. In a medical sense, do we need to amputate Quebec to save Canada? If it's treatable, no, but if it's like gangrene, unfortunately yes (a.k.a. separation). In a worst case, the patient may be so sick that all you can do is salvage a few organs.

One single larger nation (a full coast to coast Canada) will always be stronger than one missing a limb, but not as long as we're burdened with the illness of coping with uncoordinated waste. Our nation as a whole will prosper greater if we can focus our resources on being internationally competitive (improving the value of our currency). The alternative is to regress inward and insulate ourselves from the world in order to protect our economy from constantly bleeding out to imports, and the downgrading of our credit rating is a slippery slope.

Oliver C. from Ontaro

Equalization is not a policy, it is part of the Constitution. Still can't understand why people don't read our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

My response: It may be part of our constitution but the formula can be changed – the Liberal Party just locked the current policy in till 2014. If you want to know more, I have this info. in my archive.

Agreed. But ... if the formula is ever changed it will be to provide all the parasites with more of your money. We have a great little gig going down here. Many, if not most, of our people either work at a seasonal job for a few weeks and get unemployment for the rest of the year or work in a fabricated government job. For example, New Brunswick has a population of 751,000 and a civil service of 53,000 ... not counting teachers and nurses. And they are all paid high saleries as if they lived in British Columbia. Thirty-eight percent of our gross provincial product comes from transfer payments. Quebec, to some extent, operates the same way as do the other Maritime provinces and Newfoundland. Although the Newfies are much worse and totally bankrupt.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Quebec and the Atlantic provinces have enough votes to keep the Liberals elected into perpetuity. In Trudeau's first election every sest in Atlantic Canada went Liberal, last time one went Green (worse than Liberal) and three went Conservative.

However, what you must understand is that we greatly appreciate all that money you send down here. We have twice as many hospitals per capita as Ontario, beautiful government buildings, fabulous parks and lots of holidays. So, instead of your mean spirited approach, you should be glad to play Santa Claus to such lovely, albeit useless, people. When I was out there working and the fat French government workers were in Florida basking in the sun with the Senators and other politicians, it warmed my heart to know that they were having fun even if I couldn't. Maybe if more of you westerners thought this way your mood would improve. Just sayin ...

I have been a true conservative all my life, and my family's connection goes back to the beginning. But, while it is true that socialism is both unfair and unworkable, Canadians are hooked on it. And, like any narcotic, getting them off it is virtually impossible. Canada is set to become more socialistic, not less. The Liberals, Greens and NDP will, in some form, rule untill, as Maggie Thatcher said, they "run out of opm" (other peoples money). Barring any such event, you guys out west are going to keep the East in a manner to which we have become accustomed. Sorry, but it's true. As a Maritimer who worked in private enterprise and had his own business, I sympathize with you - I've been screwed too.

Jim C. from NB

NB is a prime example of using their funding from other provinces and throwing it down the toilet, wreaking havoc on a very broken and morally corrupting public education system. They service four failing second language programs within the Anglophone sector, and because of duality, they fund two complete departments of education, fund two health authorities and the list goes on and on. We could easily bilingualize all children in NB without dividing and segregating children into divisive and unequally funded programs, but politicians promote the status quo. It’s too political to do otherwise. So the Anglophone sector will continue to graduate most of their students without the necessary language requirements to meet their unreasonable bilingual requirements. Equal opportunity applies only to a minority of NBers and casual laundry positions at the provincial hospitals will continue to be available only to bilinguals.

Jane S. from NB

Yes, the equalization formula is a warped socialist construct based on equalizing the tax RATES (not the amount of tax you generate). If you generate a tremendous amount of tax dollars by encouraging development with low tax rates (Alberta), the equalization formula says you SHOULD have generated even more IF you had charged the AVERAGE tax RATE (and therefore Ottawa will only give you back a small portion of what you actually generated and give the rest to Quebec who charged very high tax rates but generates no income). This is an insane, illogical left wing idea to reward the high taxing lazy socialists and penalize the low-taxing entrepreneurs. Obviously, if you had charged the higher average tax rate, you would not have generated the business (and revenue and taxes from it).

This is the insanity of Canada and Alberta must leave it behind.

Joe C.

Thanks for the article. It's very good. However, what the author misses is that the federal political parties will always need to pander to Quebec to get elected. That won't change.

As for Alberta, it's now receiving equalization payments, but Albertans must still resent the restrictions on their oil industry. Some might want to leave Canada, but the challenges involved would intimidate most -- especially new immigrants, who would not see the point. Hence, the Wexit movement will never gain enough momentum to succeed. Instead, those Albertans who understand the issues will continue to feel resentful, and journalists will keep writing articles about how unfair the situation is.

The best we can hope for is that resentful Albertans will continue supporting the CPC, which will help maintain some sanity in Canadian politics.

Paul

How many readers of our mailing list are on social media? Would anyone on social media want to help us circulate information about the problems being created by the Official Languages Act? If you are on FaceBook, do you know that there is a lively debate on our FB page at this link: https://www.facebook.com/languagefairness.ca/

We have come across many videos made by J. J. McCullough. He used to write for the HuffPost in Canada but he currently writes for the Washington Post. Here is one of his videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJQ5HUUbONs

English Canada vs. French Canada — why we don't get along

Take time to listen to it & let’s exchange views on whether he has been accurate in his portrayal of why Canada is in so much trouble. J. J. seems to know his stuff & is able to provide statistics on what he says so feel free to ask for some more links.

Kim

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