Hard to get used to accepting equalization handouts

Hard to get used to accepting equalization handouts

Columns

Bernie O'Neill

News Ontario will, for the first time in its history, receive equalization payments from the rest of Canada, while places such as Newfoundland will not, left me feeling somehow inadequate this week.

I mean, the news takes a bit of the strut out of your step, like you’re a peacock who has just had his feathers plucked.

Being an Ontarian has always made me think that I not only lived in the best country in the world, but the best province in the best country in the world.

In York Region, I’m in the best part of the best province of the best country.

But now it’s as if the family next door had dropped off a cardboard box filled with groceries — they just left it on the porch — even though I had never really asked for it.

“Sorry to hear about your troubles,” reads a handwritten note inside the box. “Let us know if there’s anything else we can do.”

The note is on really nice customized stationery, that rich people order for themselves. It has gold-coloured trim that makes you think that maybe it’s real gold.

And yet I’d never said anything to them about how bad things were getting.

Well, maybe I had. I had complained Ottawa was taking too much of my money in taxes and not giving enough back. The so-called fiscal imbalance.

Now, I was suddenly getting a handout, because Ottawa told my neighbours they must share their good fortune with me, who had run into misfortune.

It’s not as if I’m ashamed about being part of a “have-not” province. Much of what has happened — the swift change in the value of the dollar, the rapid rise in oil prices, the collapse of the U.S. housing market, problems in the auto sector  — weren’t within my control.

It’s still just going to take some getting used to, to think we need help to keep our social programs on par with other parts of the country.

But we’ve all got mouths to feed and when a guy’s down on his luck, he’s got to take what he can get. If that means $350 million in handouts from the neighbours, so be it, is what you start thinking.

Besides, didn’t we help them out back when the cod fishery collapsed in the early ‘90s?

Since then, a la Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies, Newfoundland has struck oil in Hibernia, the profits are pouring in and the Irish eyes are smiling in St. John’s.

Or St. Jan’s, as they might say it.

I think that’s the problem — I just don’t have the right accent to be living in a have-not province.

Watching Barak Obama make history in the U.S. election Tuesday night, I felt like I should be watching a TV that had rabbit ears.

My workboots would be safely lodged in the corner, having already worked the 10 weeks I needed to make me eligible for UI.

That’s the stereotype we held of Newfoundlanders at one time. But as Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams declared last week, the Newfie Joke is dead.

Makes me wonder what they’ll start thinking of us, or if Ontario Jokes will be all the rage, with websites and books popping up.

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan tried to reassure people he expected Ontario’s have-not status would be short-lived.

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did not agree.

While I appreciated his words that this was not a time for bickering, I can’t help but feel the situation is more political than Mr. Flaherty lets on.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has been arguing for years about the fiscal imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces. In a nutshell, we paid in far more than we got back from Ottawa. (One example given is the far greater number of weeks a person would have to work in Ontario to benefit from employment insurance payments, compared to a fisheries worker in Newfoundland, leaving us short about $2 billion. We’ll see if Ottawa makes the same concessions to preserve the auto industry as it made to save the fishery. So far, it hasn’t.)

If money was being distributed on a per capita basis, Ontario would have received much more in transfer payments over the past decade, Mr. McGuinty has argued.

Instead of doing something about it, Mr. Flaherty criticized our taxation levels, which are high, and suggested no one would want to invest here.

Now, the announcement we had become a province that would receive equalization payments sounds like his version of “I told you so”.

Maybe it’s just pride, but I still feel like I live in the best province in the country and that we will adapt and outwork and outhustle our neighbours and put Ontario back on top.

There just might be some stormy seas ahead that we have to navigate our way through first.

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