Quote:
Originally Posted by Flacker
Agreed, a downturn is the ideal time to capitalize on cheap labour costs.
And I don't disagree that the royalty and taxation model is broken. They just approached it in a very damaging way, by not having a finite schedule and plan.
I also think the way the provinces are setup to compete against each other is counterproductive. The federal government should be looking at model similar to Norway, who have socked away one hell of a nest egg. Such talk will be scary to most westerners however, because it sounds like NEP 2.0.
We need a federally mandated royalty regime IMO, with revenues still controlled provincially, and fairly distributed via provincial transfer payments.
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Well the thing with Norway is that they set-up a crown corporation that automatically gets access to I believe it's 50% of their resources before they auction off the rest, most if not all of which they pump into a national heritage fund. Unfortunately I think we might be too far down the road to go that route, and it would also never fly in a province with Alberta's historical political leanings.