[MarchHare]

Here's a few questions... did any other province cut their programs like Alberta had to in order to make ends meet?

I can't think of a single province that hasn't made huge cut-backs to spending over the last 10-15 years.

Did any other province have no control over its resources until it was a province for 25 years (aside from Sask)?

Some provinces don't even have control over their resources now: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/fishing/cod.html

Do any other provinces have as many average hours per week of work?

Are you suggesting other provinces aren't as well-off as Alberta because their citiznes are lazy and don't as hard? Just so we're clear...

Or even better... do any other provinces have legitimate pro-business governments (aside from BC?)

I'm not sure about other provinces, but New Brunswick -- at least while they were governed by Frank McKenna's Liberals -- was very pro-business.

BC and Saskatchewan also have substantial oil and gas... why aren't they booming like Alberta??

As I mentioned above, Saskatchewan was a "have" province in 2004-2005, thanks largely to the surge in oil prices.

present (Sask) inept governments are making that difficult.

I'll be the very first to accuse past NDP governments in BC and Ontario of being inept, but the Saskatchewan NDP certainly isn't. They run a balanced budget and Saskatchewan has been an economic success lately.

I should add, I'm not opposed to the Western Energy Accord idea. Share it with the West, help all those provinces thrive... perhaps a preamble to a Republic of Western Canada?

Why are you willing to share Alberta's wealth with the West but not other provinces? What have Atlantic Canadians done to deserve your scorn?

Personally, I think money earned by the Alberta provincial government is rightfully their's...no other province has a claim to that money. I don't have a problem with federal taxes collected from Albertans being sent to other provinces, though. I'm a Canadian first and foremost, and an Albertan second. You won't hear me complaining about the federal government using our money to assist other provinces that didn't win the lottery by having some arbitrary lines drawn on a map contain massive amounts of oil.

By the way, has anyone in the federal government actually proposed taking part of the surplus of the Alberta provincial government? I know Paul Martin has denied that Ottawa is planning any such cash-grab. How would they even go about doing such a thing anyway? I can't imagine there's any law on the books that allows one level of government to take money from another like that.