[Kosy123]

When it comes to fiscal imbalances it does though? The main issue is, aside from certain areas like Wood Buffalo and some resource rich areas with industrial and resource extraction locations, the story is that of the large urban areas being massive net contributors to the provincial tax base.

GDP per capita, while useful to see where economic activity happens doesn't account for the provincial fiscal flow, from PITs, CITs and things like the education property taxes. A significant amount of rural communities don't have the necessary tax base that pays for their infrastructure, especially when it comes to policing and healthcare. Most communities and municipalities are net receivers.

Edmonton and Calgary definitely punch above and carry the rest of the province when it comes to that. That was the crux of my frustration, when these communities are essentially net receivers in our own provincial tax and fiscal pool, yet deride and complain about federal "equalization".

 

[inclusion]

Got to hand it to the UCP for its strategic approach. If you never make any decisions, it's hard to be held accountable for anything. Much easier to govern when you simply blame everyone else and make crazy decisions every day that don't last 24 hours in the news cycle until another crazy implementation comes about. Recently, the signs, the ambulances, the hundreds of millions wasted on MHCare contracts (oh wait, we aren't supposed to remember that one).

They are literally in the GOP's bedroom (read the article). It won't surprise me at all if the actual results are closer than many expect, and the disinformation campaign will continue regardless of the results. Nothing in their rollout is a "mistake" or unintentional.

 

[kcantor]

When it comes to fiscal imbalances it does though? The main issue is, aside from certain areas like Wood Buffalo and some resource rich areas with industrial and resource extraction locations, the story is that of the large urban areas being massive net contributors to the provincial tax base.

GDP per capita, while useful to see where economic activity happens doesn't account for the provincial fiscal flow, from PITs, CITs and things like the education property taxes. A significant amount of rural communities don't have the necessary tax base that pays for their infrastructure, especially when it comes to policing and healthcare. Most communities and municipalities are net receivers.

Edmonton and Calgary definitely punch above and carry the rest of the province when it comes to that. That was the crux of my frustration, when these communities are essentially net receivers in our own provincial tax and fiscal pool, yet deride and complain about federal "equalization".

Edmonton and Calgary only punch above and carry the rest of the province when it comes to provincial income tax revenues, not total provincial revenues. Furthermore, that's a reflection of the number of people in those two cities paying provincial income taxes. On a per capita basis and not an aggregated basis, individuals in Edmonton and Calgary aren't paying more than anyone else in the province earning the same money. For those outside Edmonton and Calgary, it would be easy to make the case that their tax dollars support provincially funded activities in Edmonton and Calgary - everything from the legislature to museums to provincial employment hubs to post secondary institutions.

As for the overall transfer that can be intuited from looking at the province spending less than it receives in tax revenue from Edmonton and Calgary, that's a result of the province underfunding those two cities, particularly when it comes to health care and hospitals, as opposed to the rest of the province freeloading. The province could fix that in a heartbeat if it wanted simply by instituting a provincial HST but that's a whole other discussion...