Equal Opportunity/Services Equality

The rationale behind the transfer payment from the federal government disbursing taxes obtained from the provinces to those areas of the country seen as less advantaged than those that do very well for themselves initially seemed justified and more than that, just and fair.  Canadians, wherever they live in the country should ideally have expectations that they would be entitled to the same level of benefits that accrue to all the citizens of the country.

It's a feel-good proposition; we're looking after our own, as it were.  "Our own" being the extended family.  Wherever you live in the country, east to west, north to south, from the Atlantic to the Pacific (right; the Arctic too) you were entitled as Canadians, to similar levels of opportunity and services.  And how absurd in practise that turned out to be. 

People living in geographically isolated communities could never hope to share the same living standards as people living in central Canada.

People make their choices, and they live them out.  It is possible to level the expectation field to a certain degree, but not quite possible to logically leaven it completely.  It is too nuanced, too complex, too demanding, and too damn expensive.  Making a choice means being responsible for yourself, taking the initiative to do what you can to be capable and responsive to your singular needs. 

It doesn't have to be a matter of geographic distance and isolation.  Various regions have varying priorities and even values.  Some are enterprising and self-reliant by nature of the population that the society represents.  (Or should that be the society that the population presents itself as valuing?)  There are regions of the country content to be dependents, feeling that their local government should be responsible for the well-being of the population.

Those are as much political as they are social decisions shared by a majority of the people living in disparate areas.  The more populous and popular areas of the country by their very nature and because living there is in demand, are more expensive areas of the country to live in.  Because of their heavy populations it is more costly to buy a home, and for government to provide services there because wages are higher.

Areas of fewer population numbers, less expensive living costs and different standards of  'norms' make it easier to provide basic services on a national standard of scale, priority and usefulness.  Those generalizations don't always hold, because Quebec, for example, is a populous province but it is one where the cost of living is far less, for example, than in Ontario.

Ontarians seem more self-reliant than Quebecers, less demanding of their government.  Quebec prides itself on its socialist agenda, and as such it provides more generous and wide-ranging social services to its population, from cheap day care to the funding of (IVF) assisted pregnancies, to inexpensive university tuition.  They are able to do this because those provinces who don't offer their residents those services help them to achieve that goal.

Quebec remains the largest equalization recipient in confederation, receiving almost half of the $14.8-billion federal transfer allocated to six provinces.  This is not what equalization payments were meant to achieve.  The province's overwhelming social welfare system is far more costly than what it could afford on its own, without relying on the $7.4-billion it receives from other areas of Canada, including Ontario.

It's far less expensive to live in Halifax, Charlottetown, Saint John, Quebec City, Montreal and Winnipeg than it is to buy a home in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver.  But Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta cannot seem to afford low-to-non-existent post-secondary tuition, and dollars-a-day day care for their residents.  Equalization payments clearly do not provide for equality in living standards.

What they do is effectively remove incentive for self-improvement.  They encourage those that receive the 'equalization' payments to feel entitled to it, with little need to exert themselves to become more needfully responsible and independent.  They represent a form of welfare payment that is ill-deserved and serves the recipients ill.

And it's time they were re-thought and the issue redressed.