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Comment by jeromegv | Hacker News Reader

You mean Ottawa? Because the province of Ontario is not contributing to the territory of Yukon.

Equalization payments:

"do not, technically, involve wealthy provinces making payments to poor provinces, although in practice this is what happens, via the federal treasury."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments

This is NOT in practice what happens. This way of framing it is popular by separatist segments in Alberta, but it's bullshit. Transfer payments come out of federal tax levies. No province is being targeted for levies. If one province has richer people and thus pay more in federal tax, then yes they will likely have a net loss in transfer payments. But this is no different than ANY federal service, whether it comes to military bases, natural resources, child care benefits, etc. It's simply how taxes work. If you're a poor person in Alberta you're paying less into equalization than a rich person in Quebec.

Except that Quebec has additional social services that are being paid for by these levies. Child care for example. Also revenue from high income taxes often come with increased prices for residents so while two people may pay similar taxes between the provinces they can have vastly different standards of living. Not unlike here in SF where you can easily pay $35k/year in taxes and you’re barely getting by while people in other cities are paying far less taxes and they own their own homes.

That's exactly what happens via the unequal distribution of federal income to the provinces.

We can argue that it's a good thing the program works the way it does and I'd argue, for the most part, that's true [0]. But all the programs you listed and the eq. program are net transfers from rich (and less politically powerful [1]) to poorer provinces.

It's akin to when coastal Americans bemoan that fly over Americans get net transfer of wealth from them.

[0]having lived in many US states, I kinda like knowing that NL, or NB is taken care of when they're in the dumps

[1] Being a 905er myself, let's be honest here! Quebec, between separatism and as a battleground province, can throw a hissy fit and get whatever they want (and good for them! Hate the game, not the player.)

> But all the programs you listed and the eq. program are net transfers from rich (and less politically powerful [1]) to poorer provinces.

Provinces don't pay tax. People do. They're net transfers from rich people (regardless of where they live) to poorer provinces. It just so happens that Alberta has a high per-capita income these days (not always the case). That's not a bad problem to have.

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