Equalization Part Deux: When the Game Is Rigged, Fair Play Is Revolution
A Response to the "Stop Whining" Critique
Stop Whining: “How are Albertans suffering?”
That was the line. A sincere one, no doubt, posed by friends in the heart of Central Canada. The tone: puzzled, dismissive, and ever so slightly patronizing. How can a province with the highest GDP per capita, no PST, better roads, cheaper housing, and the lowest fuel prices claim injury?
Let me explain it plainly: This isn’t about material wealth. This is about dignity, fairness, and spiritual homeland.
When I was a boy growing up in Medicine Hat, I spent my childhood in our family’s Art Gallery, immersed in the fine and liberal arts as a curious guy, learning to preserve and frame on the prairies. By my twenties, in Ontario I was entrusted with national treasures—artworks by the masters of this land. But on a preservation job, a newspaper publisher, upon learning I was from Alberta, turned to his colleagues and mocked: “Then should I speak slower?”
I said nothing at the time.
A Confederation of Cognitive Dissonance
What Central Canada cannot seem to comprehend is that Alberta’s grievance is not one of poverty—it’s one of systemic disenfranchisement.
Yes, Alberta makes money. That’s the point. And it is precisely because we are productive that Ottawa exploits us, cloaked in the rhetoric of “solidarity.”
“Equalization” is not charity—it is structural extraction.
It is not about helping the poor. It is about penalizing productivity and incentivizing underperformance. It is not a neutral formula—it is a constitutional rig job baked into the 1982 repatriation.
From 1965 until today, Alberta has not received a single equalization dollar. Meanwhile, Quebec will collect over $129 billion in equalization between 2015 and 2029—even while it blocks pipelines, bans natural gas, and regulates itself into deliberate underperformance to game the system.
And if that’s not rigged, I don’t know what is.
“Political Victims” or Generationally Gaslit?
Some accuse Albertans of liking the “political victim” role. As if it’s a cosplay. As if the economic trauma of the 1980s was a mood swing and not a deliberate assault on our economy via the National Energy Program. As if we’re imagining that businesses closed, homes lost value, and entire generational wealth trajectories were vaporized under a Liberal Ottawa that never blinked.
I was there. I saw it. My generation paid in full—and the bill keeps arriving.
This isn’t a complaint of the rich. It’s a declaration of existential insult. A call from a people who, after generations of sacrifice, innovation, and growth, find themselves with no spiritual home in Canada.
This Isn’t About Equalization Anymore—It’s About Meaning
A nation cannot survive on GDP alone. A people need meaning, fairness, and respect.
You can’t engineer regional loyalty through handouts. You earn it through honourable governance, reciprocity, and shared sacrifice. The current system violates all three.
Canada, in its current constitutional form, is not a federation of equals—it’s a center-periphery machine with unchallenged gravitational cores.
Until that is confronted—not merely updated—the path to national renewal will be obscured.
The Alberta Awakening Is Real
A new wave rises:
Premier Danielle Smith is calling for equal per-capita transfers for the big four provinces.
Peter McCaffrey’s Alberta Institute is architecting sovereignty mechanisms from the inside out.
Jeff Rath and others are pitching “statehood” in U.S. media right now.
It’s the natural endpoint of decades of betrayal. I’m not saying I agree with it—but I ask all Canadians to face it directly. Sit with the reality of the sentiment before dismissing it as fringe. Don’t default to smug reflexes or let your amygdala hijack the conversation with noise about how Albertans should behave.
Fair Play or No Play
You want unity? Then play fair.
You want Confederation? Then honour the West.
You want to mock us as loud, oil-rich rubes? Fine.
Fair play isn’t a polite option.
Even children know this. Adults must relearn it.