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"The major factor behind the NEP
wasn’t Canadianization or getting more from the industry or
even
self-sufficiency. The determinant factor was the fiscal imbalance
between the provinces and the federal government.... Our proposal was
to increase Ottawa’s share appreciably, so that the share of
the
producing provinces would decline significantly and the
industry’s
share would decline somewhat."
-Rt.
Honourable Marc Lalonde, Minister of Energy |
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"I like to do politics with
people from the East. Joe Clark and Stockwell Day are from Alberta.
They are a different type."
-Rt. Honourable Jean Chretien, Prime
Minister of
Canada |
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"It [the NEP] was some of the
worst economic policy of the 20th century,"
-Ken Norrie, Dean of Faculty of
Arts, former
Professor of Economics, University of Alberta
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"[The NEP] destroyed thousand and
thousand of jobs. It virtually destroyed me. I had spent 30 years
building up my position as a lawyer acting for the oil and gas
industry. My practice was devastated. Property values plummeted, and
I've never gotten back to where I was then."
-Edmonton
lawyer Bob Matheson |
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"Is Alberta always to be in a
state of tutelage to the East? Yes, until she insists on equality of
rights"
-Alwyn
Bramley-Moore, 1911
"The present tariff makes the
West a private preserve for exploitation by eastern manufacturers."
-Alwyn
Bramley-Moore
"Grievances
after a time engender bitterness and hatred."
-Alwyn
Bramley-Moore
"From
a geographical standpoint, there is no more sense in a union between
Alberta and Eastern Canada than there is between Eastern Canada and
England."
-Alwyn
Bramley-Moore
"Alberta
first, last and forever."
-Alwyn Bramley-Moore
"Nothing
could have more forcibly brought home to my mind the injustice of a
state of affairs by which a provincial government assumes the
liabilities incident to the development of a vast country, while the
natural resources of that country are owned and controlled by a foreign
government [Canada]."
-Alwyn Bramley-Moore
"[H]oist the flag of independence, which
would, ipso facto, make the province owner of her resources. After a
banquet or two and patriotic oratory, the province might express a
desire to be reinstated in the Confederation and then she would be in a
position to make a bargain."
-Alwyn Bramley-Moore
"I hope you grow up to be a good Albertan."
-Alwyn Bramley-Moore
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"Alberta
can blow me."
-Scott Reid,
press secretary for Prime Minister Paul Martin, the official
spokesperson for Paul Martin and the Liberal Party
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"We'll always be on guard
against the federal government intruding into our good fortune and
trying to take advantage of it."
-Ralph Klein,
2004
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"Canada is like an old cow. The
West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine
what it's doing in the Maritimes."
-Former
Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas |
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"Despite the lack of
a serious instrument for the expression of separatist values,
separatist sentiment is virtually universal amongst
people born and raised in Alberta. The class of federal-government
beneficiaries here is small. Most Albertans are vaguely aware that
Confederation, for us, is a huge financial rip-off, with outgoing net
government transfers amounting to thousands of dollars a head every
year. It is a mystery to us exactly what we get for
our federal taxes nowadays. Sit down and try to work it out sometime if
you're an Albertan, remembering that health, welfare, and education are
provincially funded and administered. What, are they spending the money
on our elite, powerfully equipped armed forces?
Asked outright "Stay
or go?", most Albertans (real Albertans, not people who came over from
Montreal at age 16) will tell you "Go", privately. It's not just the
rural loonies, either: as a rule, the more you know about trying to run
a business, the more likely you are to answer "Go".
I have a lot of trouble making Easterners understand this. If any
well-known leader decides to step up and give a voice to Alberta
separatism, they will learn. And fast."
-Colby Cosh, journalist
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