Why Now Is The Perfect Time to Wave a Friendly Goodbye to Quebec
by
Lowell Green
“Once you carry the stain of the English language and culture, no matter where you were born, how long you have lived here, or the number of generations your family has been here, you can never be a full-fledged Quebecois and this can never be your true home. Full membership and participation are denied. You are merely tolerated and you should count yourself lucky at that. After all, you are an undesirable!”
– Kevin Richard, Sherbrooke Record
(One of only two daily English language newspapers left in Quebec).
This book was researched, written, edited, designed, formatted, printed, delivered and sold in Canada by Canadians without any financial assistance from any level of government. In addition, HST in full has been paid at every level of production to editors, publishers, designers, artists, printers, delivery service, accountants, lawyers and advertising. To the best of our knowledge all paper used in this book was manufactured in Canada by Canadian pulp and paper workers.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2067-7
Printed and bound in Canada
® 2013 Lowell Green
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Green, Lowell, 1936-, author
Why now is the perfect time to wave a friendly goodbye to Quebec / Lowell Green.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-9813149-4-5 (bound)
1. Sovereignty. 2. Self-determination, National--Québec (Province). 3. Canada--Politics and government--2006-. 4. Québec (Province)-Politics and government--2012-. 5. Québec (Province)--History--Autonomy and independence movements. I. Title.
FC2926.9.S4G74 2013 971.4'05 C2013-905073-6
First Printing September 2013
This book is dedicated to my wife Deborah.
“Through thick and thin!”
FOREWORD
In the past six years the Province of Quebec has sucked more than $50 billion in transfer payments from the rest of Canada (ROC). We’ll pump close to another $9 billion into the pockets of the separatist (and I believe racist) government this year.
All that “welfare” money while the Province refuses to tap into the 46 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that have been discovered just beneath the earth’s crust along the St. Lawrence. A recent announcement that they would allow some exploratory drilling on Anticosti Island is nothing but a stall tactic.
While Quebec pretends this heel dragging exercise is out of environmental concerns I suspect the real reason is much more devious and totally self-serving. By holding off drilling or fracking for oil and gas until they achieve independence, the separatist government avoids having to share any of the revenue, royalties or taxes with the rest of Canada.
While it is true natural resources are owned by the individual provinces, the federal government exercises control over inter-provincial and international trade and shares jurisdiction of many environmental matters with the provinces. The federal government would also, of course, collect billions in various forms of taxes.
To give you some idea of the kind of money we’re talking about, consider this.
The Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) estimates that the oil sands of Alberta will create $444 billion in tax revenue across Canada in the next 25 years. More than 70 per cent of that—$322 billion will go the federal government. These figures do not include any revenues or taxes from the sale of natural gas or oil from sources in the province other than the oil sands.
Obviously, as an independent nation, Quebec would not have to fork over a single cent of royalties or taxes to the rest of Canada. They would own and control it all, lock, stock and barrel!
It is doubtful that Quebec would be able to extract oil at a volume comparable to that of Alberta, but no matter which way you look at it, tens of billions of dollars are at stake.
It boils down to this. As part of Canada, any revenue, royalties or taxes from the development of Quebec oil and gas would have to be shared at least in part with the federal government and thus the rest of Canada. In addition, the federal government would be able to exercise considerable control over the industry, in particular many matters relating to environmental concerns as well as inter-provincial and international trade.
But, as an independent nation, Quebec would have full control over the industry and retain the income in all its forms!
Machiavellian? Yes it is. But then what in Quebec these days is not?
At the very least we can stop or slow down the flow of money from the rest of Canada (ROC) into Quebec in 2014 when the Harper Government must renew, amend or cancel the equalization program which very clearly is a flagrant
