Study
| EST. READ TIME 1 MIN.Equalization, Ontario, and the politics of division
Equalization is a federal transfer program that is explicitly designed to subsidize provinces with weak own-source revenues and to be politically unifying. However, the flip in Ontario?s status from a ?have? to a ?have-not? province has had, and will continue to have, profound consequences for the country as a whole.
This essay focuses on three results that have evolved since 2008/09, the year before Ontario became a ?have-not? province: First, Ontario?s shift means the majority of Canada?s population now live in equalization-receiving provinces; second, a ?have-not? province (Ontario) has higher average living standards than two ?have? provinces (British Columbia and Newfoundland & Labrador); third, all four remaining ?have? provinces are relatively rich in resources while no other province is.
As part of an on-going equalization research program, this essay highlights the above three results of Ontario?s ?have-not? shift.
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Mark Milke
Mark Milke was a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute between 2010 and 2015. Mr. Milke led the Institute’s workon Alberta-related issues as well as contributing to a broad host of national and regional studies. Mr. Milke is currently an independent analyst and consultant in Calgary.Mr. Milke has authored four books on Canadian politics and policy and dozens of studies on topics such as property rights, public sector pensions, corporate welfare, competition policy, aboriginal matters and taxes. Prior to joining the Fraser Institute, Mr. Milke was the research director for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and former B.C. and Alberta director with the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation. His work has been published widely in Canada since 1997 and in addition to the Fraser Institute, his papers have also been published in the United States by the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation and in Europe by the Brussels-based Centre for European Studies.Mr. Milke’s opinion columns appear regularly in the Calgary Herald and Globe and Mail, as well as in the National Post, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, and Victoria Times Colonist. Mr. Milke has a Master’s degree from the University of Alberta where his M.A. thesis analyzed human rights in East Asia; he also has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Calgary where his doctoral dissertation analyzed the rhetoric of Canadian-American relations. Mr. Milke is president of Civitas, and a past lecturer in Political Philosophy and International Relations at the University of Calgary.… Read more