Basically because individually we make a lot of money here in Alberta, we'll never get equalization because our fiscal capacity is considered to be much higher.
Capacity is basically a country-wide average tax rate in those 5 categories * provincial income/money that is subjected to that tax rate.
Since our per capita income is high even in the throes of an oil crash and pretty much a depression with zero resource revenue, we will still continue to pay into equalization.
The main difference between Alberta and other provinces is that our provincial governments haven't really tapped much into our capacity (we have the lowest tax rates in Canada by a huge amount in every category), which is why we have a pretty big structural deficit that's been historically covered up by oil and gas revenue.
My main issue with equalization is that it doesn't seem to take into account the cost of providing services into account. Our teachers, nurses, public engineers and doctors are also the highest paid in the country by a significant margin due to the fact that they have to compete with the O&G industry. However, equalization assumes that the cost to deliver a standard of service is the same country-wide.
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