Two comments on the Dec. 03 letter from Mr. Leugner:
- His diatribe has absolutely nothing to do with the thrust of Mr. Perras’ earlier letter, other than to use it provide an excuse to trot out his own prejudices
- I have no idea where he gets his figures from, but I would sure appreciate it if he would identify his sources as they are strictly ‘voodoo’ economics otherwise. I quote a couple of his assertions below:
o “During the same period” (2007-18)“ B.C. … received federal payments of $365 million.” Really? Over 11 years, the total of all Federal funds flowing into BC averaged $33 million a year? Including the military, RCMP, Federal civil servants and retirees, Coast Guard, CPP, OAS, Health care, etc.? Or does Mr. Leugner’s view of economics use different definitions than the rest of us for ‘federal payments’?.
Trudeau took taxpayers money and bought the Trans Mountain pipeline to help Alberta’s oil producers. Alberta gets nothing? What, exactly, did Harper ever do to help Alberta?
Did Kenny send the military nurses back to Ottawa when Albertans voted against Section 36(2)? And what did Kenny do with the billion dollars that Ottawa gave Alberta a year ago for orphan wells? “Federal funding to clean up Alberta’s inactive oil and gas wells was not well spent” and “amounts to little more than a bailout to the oil and gas industry,” (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/07/07/news/what-did-alberta-do-trudeau-money-oil-gas-cleanup
We had Stephen Harper as Prime Minister for nine years plus nine-and-a-half months; he (aided by Jason Kenny) was the last to modify the equalization payment system and apparently deemed it good for Alberta. Similarly, we had Brian Mulroney for nine years, and he and his Alberta MPs were apparently content with the existing programmes. Heck, the first formal Federal approach to equalization was implemented in 1957, and the Diefenbaker Conservatives (1957-63) apparently considered the system to be fair to the West.
Doug James
Calgary
