An Ode To Alberta.

Oh how I love thee Alberta, with your lucrative oil sands and snow-capped mountains.  You shine across this great land with your quality beef, enormous shopping mall, and WestJet regional hub.  You stay the course and never turn back on a decision…well, until yesterday that is.

In 1969, you jumped into the controversial world of health premiums by implementing a “user fee”, or friendly “here’s to helping you get better” tax.  Albertan families paid an average of $1,056 a year in health premium taxes to the government last year alone.  Your decision to change the course and eliminate them is a major reversal for a 37-year-old government that has resisted calls to stop collecting the much-loathed fees.  Well, sometimes the message gets lost in the delivery and so we cannot blame you for not getting it earlier.  After all, your neighbor British Columbia followed suit, as did Ontario.  Could they be that bad a thing to have around?  But why now Alberta?  Why give up on something that has caused so much controversy for so long?

After all, you do have the highest number of incorporated professionals in the country saving money on personal taxes and the largest concentration of Health Spending Accounts per capita in Canada.  Considering this, it would appear that taxes and healthcare are obviously not issues for Albertans.  It certainly is an issue for Ontarians like me, but of course, we are still adapting to healthcare premiums and de-listed services.  Give us a few more years and everyone in Ontario will be incorporated with their own Health and Welfare Trust.  I wonder if Mr. McGuinty realizes this?  It could be a budget balancing issue if everyone starts paying less tax through incorporation.

Oh well, at least we have those oil sands.  Fort McMurray is just north of Sudbury, right?