T Inman;
Happy Thanksgiving to you my cyber friend!
You are most welcome and thanks for both reading and the note.
From chatting with friends who live and work there as well as reading, I'd say that in a practical sense the territories would be eligible for more Federal money, but have less control over where it's spent. Please note that's just my "Cole's Notes" version of it and nothing more.
One of the big sticking points in Canadian provincial relationships are the Federal Transfer Payments which go from "have" provinces to "have not" provinces. For instance Alberta used to pay boat loads of money into the system and received nothing back because of it's oil and gas industry.
Now that the current Liberal government has essentially allowed it to be destroyed, they still don't get any transfer payments coming back in.
Here in BC, our GDP exceeded all of the Atlantic provinces combined... but we have zero say in how they spend the money and worse still, they have more seats in Parliament than we do, so of course they'll keep electing folks like the Liberals who will continue to keep them on the Federal dole...
That's going into the rhubarb a wee bit, but not exactly which is unusual for me I suppose.
Happy Thanksgiving again sir.
Dwayne
