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Comment by armenarmen | Hacker News Reader

I met a Québécois woman years ago that said their own independence movement was shut down in part because of new immigrants to Canada not wanting to leave the commonwealth. No clue if that’s right or not. But given how much of a cash cow the western provinces are for Canada, and the mega spike in immigration it makes me wonder

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Thats not hard to believe. An immigrant wouldnt be a part of some native separatist movement.

Maybe look for information instead of sharing uninformed opinions on a random anecdote?

Net federal tax by province for 2024:

   East:
   ON:  92,392M
   QC:  43,549M
   NS:   4,464M
   NB:   5,167M
   NL:   2,467M
   PE:     680M

   West:
   BC:  33,037M
   AB:  29,900M
   SK:   5,579M
   MB:   5,745M

   North:
   NT:     273M
   NU:     162M
   YT:     254M

To call the west a “cash cow” is just a bit misleading, even if you grant the separatists British Columbia, which is frankly a laughable notion.

Would you be kind and recalculate this per person in each province? Thank you!

Why? What do you think this will show?

Obviously it will be higher in the west because incomes are higher, but the rates will be the same, which is the more salient point.

You'll see the same thing if you look at any sub-national division with high salaries - e.g. Toronto and Vancouver have similar incomes as Alberta, so pay a similar amount per person in federal taxes.

Ottawa-Gatineau is notably more of a cash cow in terms of federal taxes than Alberta, by the taxes-paid-per-person measure.

5.7k for Ontario, 5.9k for Alberta.

Thank you.

However the numbers dont tell the whole story. A lot of alberta's wealth is tied to oil. That presents three problems.

A) having too much of your economy be tied to oil generally causes dysfunction in the country. See all of the middle east.

B) Solar is getting cheaper. I dont think oil is going away in the next 5 years. But 20 years? Idk

C) independent Alberta would be landlocked. You think getting pipelines is hard now. Just wait until you have left the country and have no leverage.

Blaming immigrants … never gets old, does it?

The part about immigration and Quebec is right though, doesn't mean the immigrants are to blame.

Fwiw my only familial connection to Canada is my Levantine immigrant cousins in Quebec

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