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Comment by the_gipsy | Hacker News Reader

But the meaning of "people want" is very delicately depending on the geographical area and moment in time.

Yes, and here "Canadians want" is used to say "the people within 100km of the St. Lawrence want". (That's actually part of the problem.)

Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed.

AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. The justifications for those policies (whether you agree with them or not) matter less than the fact they're being imposed from a condition of moral hazard.

Hence, the people of AB might vote to ban the people of ON/QC from imposing their laws; that's what separation is and why it happens.

> AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development.

Not only that, but the Feds typically use their outsized tax revenue from Alberta to “invest” in Quebec to buy votes via propping up unviable businesses, subsidies, outsized proportion of public sector jobs, and federal spending in general.

Hey, the little old lie that Québec, which does get an outsized proportion of the political attention, gets an outsized proportion of the federal money, which it doesn’t.

You can find many examples of specific programs where Québec gets the federal government’s money in incredible amounts. But you add all these programs together and you still come up short per person compared to Ontario. Why?

The Southern Ontario car sector.

Any dime that goes to the oil or gas business is a mistake, especially at the moment. Blindingly profitable, let them pay their way.

The only possible way to come to a conclusion as wrong as yours is by looking at gross instead of net federal spending by province.

When you consider the tiny detail of actually contributing to federal finances, in the past 20 years alone Quebec has received ~360 billion more than it contributed, whereas Ontario has received ~232 billion LESS than it contributed.

Nearly half a trillion difference between the two, and nothing to do with the auto industry whatsoever.

And tomorrow people in the rich half of AB don't want to subsidize the poorer half, and so on.

Before you rag Quebec too much, note that they are at least practicing being independent. They maintain a police force, they have foreign services. They collect their own taxes. See what Alberta thinks when they have to pay their own way rather than letting Canada handle things. While they rent the ramp I doubt they’re handling their pensions. QC runs its own pension.

And all the First Nations treaties are with the Crown and predate Alberta.

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