Quebec Largest Welfare Province

Interesting study titled More of the Same? The Position of the Four Largest Canadian Provinces in the World of Welfare Regimes with not all too surprising conclusions.

For example, Quebec clearly has the largest welfare apparatus whereas Alberta maintains a smaller one. Ontario and British Columbia are more balanced.

Quebec is more European in its outlook (a mix of Scandinavian and Southern European policies) while Alberta more "ultraliberal" along American lines. But all four provinces remain distinct in their realities of operating within a Canadian context.

For example, while Alberta shares similar attributes with, say, Texas it's still more to the "left." Which is why I always laugh whenever I hear that Alberta is "extreme."

Ontario (like B.C.) has a very interesting voting history straddling between Liberal, Conservative and NDP which basically left a legacy whereby no specific ideology or party dominates.

Worth the read.

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About Quebec. It's often asserted that in the event of independence, we can kiss our welfare programs good-bye because with it we lose equalization payments. Nationalists think this is nonsense since we pay for our programs through income taxes (which rings hollow to me) pointing out that Quebec doesn't receive that much from Ottawa on a per capita basis (which again, is playing with the numbers a little - among the big provinces, Quebec receives the most and is rightly considered a have-not province).

As you can tell, I fall more in line with the 'where are we gonna get the money?' crowd.

If you're a socialist student protestor turned politician, there's no problem. You'll just angle to expropriate income through taxes to pay for it.