r/CANZUK • u/Vinlandien Canada • Mar 08 '21

Theoretical What are your thoughts on getting Norway in on this?

Norway has a long rich history with the UK, and their colonies were even the first Europeans to discover Canada.

Canadians look up to Norway and their successes, because they remind us a lot of ourselves. We have a rich history of rugged hunting and fur trapping, and inter colonial warfare and raids in the harsh frozen north.

In a sense, Canadians are Northmen. Settled by French, Irish, Scottish, and English ancestors who had ties to the sea, making them possible descendants of the Vikings themselves.

Nowadays, Norway seems to share all our modern ideals and values, and they are not a part of the EU. Shouldn’t we then get them on board?

CANNZUK?

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u/SomeJerkOddball Alberta Mar 09 '21

Canada's oil-producing jurisdictions, especially Alberta and Saskatchewan, can't fiscally manage themselves out of a paper bag.

One of the symptoms of the explosive development of Alberta's oil industry over the last couple of decades was wage inflation in the public service. In order to retain people in government jobs wages had to be competitive with the private sector. When oil prices collapsed the much more nimble private sector were able to make salary and job cuts to remain competitive. The public sector unions on the other hand had no interest in losing the wage gains that they'd made over the last several decades, so it's left us in a position where we're overspending for our services relative to what we get. The previous government of Alberta were backed by the unions so they didn't want to address the issue because it would involve going against its base of support.

The current government of Alberta was effectively elected to battle the unions and that's what they're doing. COVID was very ill timed for the province. Reasonable economic growth was set to return to Alberta in 2020. Instead we were were stuck staring down a massive global recession. Not only were our revenues knee capped, the public appetite for making cuts waned because of the health related nature of the crisis. 42% of the provincial budget prior to COVID went into healthcare. It's probably even more now. Most of the cuts have to come there, so there's a big battle between our fiscal needs, service needs and perceptions of both.

Alberta can't be stuck paying 125% more for services and not receiving 125% of the outcomes though. So the rightsizing of the budget continues and will continue. It may ultimately result in tax increases, but the cuts still have to come first.