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Originally Posted by Maccalus
I am not defending the vagueness of the budget, but every party has similar vague term budgets until they table a full and complete budget.
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Absolutely agreed. Please don't make the same mistake that crazy_eoj did and take my criticism of the WR platform as a tacit endorsement of any other party's proposals.
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Regarding the better negotiated equalization deal. I believe what they were going for was to negotiate the federal transfers for programs such as health care move more towards a per capita funding situation. The federal conservatives made a change towards this in this year's budget, which will result in the province of Alberta receiving more money. I will agree, it is a horrible display communication.
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That has nothing to do with equalization, though. There are several different transfer payment programs between Ottawa and the provinces. Equalization is one such program, from which Alberta does not currently receive any benefit (although we have in the past). So by saying that a hypothetical Wildrose government would negotiate a better equalization deal for Alberta, they're either being ignorant about what the program is and how it works, or they're being deliberately disingenuous in order to capitalize on fears of Eastern boogymen after Alberta's wealth.
The transfer payment you mentioned above is the Federal Health Transfer, a program in which every province -- including Alberta -- has always received funding.