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This is a column in the “smallish things that might become important later” genre. You have probably noticed an increased quantity of squawking from Alberta lately about the federal equalization program. The squawking is very familiar, and the premise has not changed over the past thirty years.

Alberta, to a very close approximation, has received a grand total of squat from equalization since the program was devised in the Fifties. (It was a “have-not” province in the very early years of the program, and collected $92 million between 1957 and 1964.) The total handouts to other provinces over the life of the program are approaching $400 billion in nominal dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that number would be in the order of $600 billion.

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Alberta, contrary to what some Albertans imagine, doesn’t write a big cheque marked “To Equalization;” scholars and pedants sometimes grow annoyed when Albertans talk as if it did. But the $400 billion did come from federal taxpayers, including rich and poor ones in Alberta. If equalization is thought of as a sort of insurance program, it appears to be a form of insurance Alberta can never collect on, no matter how lousy local economic conditions get. We seem to be permanently, structurally ineligible.