It doesn’t matter how smart a person is, lots of things can cloud their judgement and application of intellect to the problems of the day (including myself although at a much reduced intellectual level). Take this Mark Milke fellow from the Frontier Centre in Calgary. He works for a think tank. Probably has advanced degrees and such and can still articulate an argument completely devoid of reason. Read his article and tell me what you think. It could be that I have my blinders on (suspect this is the case) but truly, the only question for Milke and everyone else in Alberta that sees red when people talk about their resource revenue is this:
The oil/gas revenue sharing deal in Canada – would lead to a civil war in Iraq. If that country were to divvy up the oil revenues the way Canada does – even through the circuitous Equalization program – it would be civil war.
In fact, I had a little look at this just for fun a few years ago – and in fact Canada system for distributing natural resources revenue is non existent. There is the back door Equalization system but the majority of Albertans even resent that. How about we scrap Equalization and divvy up the resource revenue like Norway.
Yikes.
I think guys like Milke would be far better off a) making their argument against sharing natural resource revenue using historical arguments – this bravado about it isn’t based on reason and b) having a little class when reacting to journalists and others in poor provinces that do not have the luck of the Albertans.
P.S. – Equalization has nothing to do with hydroelectricity. It’s just a very cheap source of electricity and that is why Manitoba can offer it more cheaply than other provinces. Why would they inflate the price and take away the one advantage they have?