Apparently, All Albertan's Are RICH!!
If you read the news online, and especially the news coming out of Ontario, you will notice that there are a lot of articles, sorry...opinion pieces that think that the Feds should take Alberta's wealth and...spread it around? One article I read was written by someone named Eric Reguly who writes for the Globe and Mail. Here is the opening paragraph:
Ralph Klein has a lot of money. The rest of us don't, for the simple reason that so many deadbeat provinces aren't sitting on billions of dead dinosaurs who had the courtesy to turn into subterranean ocean of oil and gas. Today's question, boys and girls, is how the rest of Canada can extract some of the riches from Alberta without the undeserving bastards noticing. Or noticing and not squawking about it.
Nice.
There are a few things that Mr. Reguly needs to know before he shoots off his mouth again. See...the province my be awash in cash these days but the people living in it aren't reaping as much benefit as he might think. Yes there are many jobs here and some are pretty well paying. But with the economic windfall comes some undesirable effects.
Housing is booming. With that boom comes higher prices. If you look at what is happening in Edmonton, the average selling price of a home jumped about $19,000 from the same period last year. The year before that it was about the same. Were looking at about a 8% to 10% house price rise per year. Incomes aren't doing the same to keep up.
Have you been to a restaurant lately? $15 for a small pizza. We don't go out much or if we do it isn't to any fancy place. Even the venerable BP's is getting a little high for pricing for our family. It's a shame as it has decent food and the kids like it. But the economic reality is that wages there have gone up and food costs have gone up. They don't have a choice but to charge for that change in extra expenses.
We pay at the pump just like anyone else. Gas has gone up a LOT and I can assure you my wages haven't gone up that much. Oh, I'm not complaining about my wage, it is actually good compared to many, but we are a one income family. That is just life.
Another thing that Mr. Reguly doesn't understand or chooses to ignore is that the east coast has quite a bit of oil revenues coming in. The problem there is that the Feds had promised to give it to the provinces but the provinces are only receiving 15% of the total revenues. The Eastern provinces could be "have" provinces if the Feds would let them. So giving the Feds more money doesn't solve the problem as they will just do with it what they choose. Maybe the new Federal Government will do a better job of actioning on that fiscal imbalance that is quite prevalent these days. It is one of their goals. Lets hope they do something to make the provinces more economically equal. Then, maybe Alberta will consider helping out when the help is actually going to do something.
But there is just one more little thing that just came across the news. Alberta has the highest median family income in the country at $61,800. The Canadian average median family income is $54,100. I would like to point out that this is the first time ever that Alberta is the highest. Ontario had the highest median family income in the country. Maybe that is why he is so ticked off; Canada's wealth landscape is changing. Hey, it's only taken 139 years for that to happen!!
5 comments:
May I put in a big "AMEN" to your post's sentiment! (not religiously, heck you could even put in a "YO WORD HOMIE" if that's more your style)
This was in the news on CBC, and I thought "WHAT THE HECK? Why don't they remind people that Alberta is paying huge in TRANSFER PAYMENTS??" I mean, maybe people are just clueless and don't realize that we ARE ALREADY SHARING THE WEALTH.
So I wrote in an email about that, no response.
Ralph Klein should bring it up whenever he gets a chance. So people don't get all pissy thinking that we are greedy, non-sharing kinda folks.
I read the Reguly piece, and I dunno whether you guys read it differently, but I think it was meant to be humorous. OK, it was mean humor, and not particularly well written, but it definitely shouldn't be taken as a representation of average Ontarians attitudes...
I think the things Lorne has described are exactly right: the province is rich but the people aren't. Some better policies around sharing out the massive surpluses (not $400 checks) by restoring the cuts to healthcare, education and other services that were made in the mid-90s would go a lot further toward spreading the wealth.
I think building Canada as a whole is reasonable goal, too, though. Sure, there can be discussions about how well (not very) the Feds do that, and what is the appropriate amount, and the attitude of the rest of the country which should be more grateful and envious, but I do think that finding a way to build the whole of Canada is one way to 'future-proof' Alberta from the time when the stuff you can dig up and ship south runs out.
This article from our friend Paul has some good points to make about Alberta: http://nuggery.blogspot.com/2006/03/alberta-disadvantage.html
well, still, things are pretty good in Alberta. It's flush with jobs, and other canadians are flocking to Alberta to take advantage.
It's just hard for the east to be outshined...
people in Quebec couldn't care less about Alberta... it's funny how un-Canadian they act! (in general...)
Well Bravus, I can't say whether Mr. Reguly is writing that tongue in cheek or not. That part about us not "squawking about it" has so much irony. NEP anyone? Yup...Alberta squawked back then. It better not happen again. As for the representation of the attitudes of Ontarians...don't think that there aren't those attitudes. I've read a number of articles about Alberta's wealth in the past year or so that even the Liberals were talking a bit about NEP2. Thus why Klein made those 'keep your hands off' speeches.
As for the monies that Alberta does send to Ottawa, do not forget that Alberta already sends more money per capita than any other province. The Feds already get money from the oil too. Look at the pump and tell me how many cents per litre the Feds get and the province gets. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it is 19 cents/litre for the Feds and 10 cents/litre for the province. I think we need to get our own back yard in order before we give all the royalties away.
The new Feds are looking into some of the fiscal imbalance between the provinces. I think that is good.
Some things I would like to see is the elimination of the Health Care Premiums. There are only 3 provinces that have them. Why with what we have going on in this province do we still need to have them.
Education would be another thing to tackle as we obviously need skilled workers in this province....make it affordable.
This boom will eventually come back to normal and not be such a boom. Life will go on in Alberta like it does everywhere else. I still think this is the best province to live in...mind you BC is awfully nice too :-)
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