Equalization talk is just political posturing
That Saskatchewan and Alberta do have legitimate grievances with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is something that cannot be ignored.
Maybe we don’t accept that we need to be doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but when you’re a farmer trying to get a crop off in this miserable year and you’re hit with a massive carbon tax bill on the natural gas you need to to dry your grain, you have good reason to be frustrated and maybe a little angry. To this, Saskatchewan Party Premier Scott Moe has a legitimate point.
Had Moe or Alberta’s United Conservative Party Premier Jason Kenney confined their own frustrations over the election results to such specific Liberal government policy issues, it would likely have bolstered their case.
But when your “new deal” in Confederation hinges on an issue you also chose not to fix for political reasons, you torch your own credibility. Moe, Kenney et al. are now clearly throwing the equalization log on this Prairie fire they claim has been ignited by the Trudeau government.
It’s deceptive, unacceptable political opportunism, coming from the leader of the Sask. Party government and cabinet minster in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government that promised to change the equalization formula a decade ago and didn’t.
To review, since the days Stephen Harper was teaching economics at the University of Calgary, he was a proponent of removing non-renewable resources from the equalization formula — a massive change that would have severely cut Quebec’s share and would have meant $800 million more, annually, in federal transfers to Saskatchewan. Unsurprisingly, it was a position wholeheartedly endorsed by everyone from Conservative MPS like Kenney and Andrew Scheer to then Saskatchewan NDP premier Lorne Calvert to then Opposition leader Brad Wall, who vowed to stand “In solidarity” with Calvert to ensure this happened.
Harper made this a Conservative election promise in January 2006, three weeks before he was elected prime minister of a minority government.
“The importance of a fair equalization deal for Saskatchewan transcends provincial and federal politics and it needs to get done quickly,” Wall proclaimed Jan. 24, 2006 upon Harper’s election. “I am committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure that happens ... regardless of who forms the federal government, the Saskatchewan Party will fight for Saskatchewan interests.”
But something strange happened when the time came to force Harper to make good on his promise ...
On the eve of Wall’s first meeting as Saskatchewan premier with then-prime minister Harper, Wall said he had no interest in bringing up why Harper hadn’t delivered on promised changes to equalization, but did say he could personally negotiate a better deal with Harper. “If we are successful, we will have done more than any equalization can do, where you’re sometimes in and sometimes out,” Wall said, after that Jan. 10, 2008 premiers’/pm dinner.
But, clearly, Harper was feeling something less than pressure to do anything. “Outside a couple journalists, we don’t hear much about it,” Harper said on Jan. 17, 2008 when asked on John Gormley’s show if he was tired about hearing about equalization reform.
On July 16, 2008 Wall told reporters: “That’s not going to happen, so it’s time for us to move on ... I’m not having this debate again.” Saskatchewan was a “have” province and needed to get out of the “have not” mindset, he explained.
Well, fast forward a decade and Wall — now out of elected politics, but an advocate for the Buffalo Project — is busily pointing out that Alberta and Saskatchewan now get zero from equalization. Meanwhile, his successor Moe is demanding a new formula, which would ensure Saskatchewan gets something from equalization while Quebec continues to get the lion’s share.
And in Alberta, Kenney is making rumblings about Albertans voting on a referendum on equalization — bizarre, given that equalization is the redistribution of federal taxes collected.
In short, somehow conservatives only see equalization as a problem when federal Liberal governments are in power — pure, partisan politics that actually hurts the West’s legitimate concerns.