Quote:
Originally Posted by Red
He specifically refers to business so maybe it's correct, but otherwise the general contribution of Alberta is trumped by Ontario and is smaller than Quebec. Slightly ahead of the "socialist" BC...
Or is this just hogwash?
http://thoughtundermined.com/2012/07...s-by-province/ |
Even for that though, the last table shows that whatever contribution Ontario makes to the Federal government, it gets it all back (and a bit more) in Federal spending and transfers within Ontario. On the other hand, for every $1 in Federal revenue collected from Albertans, the Feds essentially only spend 52c of it in Alberta.
Imagine if Alberta was a separate country where Albertans pay the exact same taxes. Even accounting for the extra expenses of running federal responsibilities, the Alberta government would have many billions more to spend. Meanwhile, the rest of Canada would have 16-17% less revenue to spend but where costs have only gone down ~10%. And this is in 2009, Alberta's economy is 40% larger now and grown more than 2.5x as fast the rest of Canada.