Saskatchewan Population Decline

[Jay]

I mean provincially.

The people in Northern Ontario have every right to move, live and work in any of the provinces in Canada. They have the right to move to the south of the province if they wish, but there is no fun in that....they would rather bitch and whine about how they have no voice when they receive plenty of money and infrastructure they couldn't afford on their own. If Manitoba took them we would just have to increase the transfer payments to Manitoba. Why bother?

 

[Prairie_Ally]

Just because Southeast Ontario is the banker doesn't mean it owns the money. You make it sound like the money you give us isn't ours...banks may hold the money but it's the customers who really own it.

 

[Jay]

Banks manufacture money.

The tax money we send north outweighs what is sent south. It is the south’s money and the north knows it. They even do property taxes differently up there because of this fact….the municipalities don’t collect it the province does. (From my understanding)

If they left we would still be sending them money and I’m willing to bet they would still be bitching.

Perhaps we could send the north more money if we didn't have to fund the rest of the welfare state in Canada....namely the other provinces.

 

[Jay]

I should add we in the south don't care we send money north...we like the idea. It's the north that has the so-called problem.

 

[Prairie_Ally]

RE: Saskatchewan Populati

Why does Ontario have the money it does? The resources which make up the primary industry which results in a secondary industry which results in a tertiary industry. Without the resources from the rest of the country you'd be sunk.

Why is Ontario so eager to maintain national unity? None of the rest of the country feels that way. I have been at many supper tables where the topic was that we should kick out Ontario. We don't need you, but you need us. You're all just a bunch of Americans down there anyways.

 

[Jay]

Thats funny...you don't need us. I don't even know where to begin on that one, but what I will say is I'd be more than happy to stop those transfer payments we send out to the tune of 23 billion annually. Instead we have to grovel to a federal government that pretends it knows how to keep the country together with Ontario money (sorry Alberta too now).

We don't need the North either especially if there going to vote NDP and talk anti-corporation talk and side with Manitoba....gee wiz, I wonder why corporations won't even think of moving up there unless they have no choice.

Ontario is the engine of this country, the rest is car. If people don't want the engine that's too bad because the engine will still produce the power and the car will sit dead on the road.

Ontario
"Ut incepit Fidelis sic permanet"


And BTW we have more to Ontario than the north’s natural resources, we have farm land…..lots and lots of it.

 

[Prairie_Ally]

RE: Saskatchewan Populati

Who provides the oil for the engine? And the metal? You may have designed the dang thing and have the patent but who actually builds that engine?

And how much do the farmers benefit from their own land? This goes back to the rural verses urban debate.

 

[Jay]

We bring in oil from everywhere, but sure Alberta is a big source. Petrolia is in Southwestern Ontario though....

Steel we get from Algoma....a lot of that steel is shipped to America though. We need steel...we need trees, and them crazy northern Ontario people aren't going to take it away from us! :lol:

Farmers do well in Ontario....some not so well, but farmers seemly only believe in the free market when corn is selling high, they believe in socialism when corn sells low. Oh well, the ethanol age is coming upon us and corn will be very important and that should piss off the North!

The north has tourism too, because people like me get sick of sitting in this cornfield of dreams.

 

[Prairie_Ally]

RE: Saskatchewan Populati

I guess farmers in Southern Ontario are doing well. Whenever I fly over there I notice all the swimming pools in all the farmyards.

As a daughter of a Saskatchewan farmer who loves the farming way of life and loves the land, it is so hard to see everything we work for be ruined by actions taken by both our provincial government and our federal government. The provincial NDP Party, as I stated earlier, is not anything like the CCF Party of Tommy Douglas. It is a completly different party. The NDP have left its rural roots and become a very urban-focussed party. Every one of the last few Saskatchewan elections the seats were split almost equally amongst rural and urban, with the urban seats consisting of NDP Party MLAs and the rural seats consisting of Sask Party MLAs. With the NDP, almost all their policies are meant to benefit the urban population, leaving the rural population literally and figurativly in the dust. And whatever measures rural Saskatchewan takes to make things better for ourselves, the NDP usually goes against it because it goes against their urban policies. That's why so many rural Saskatchewaners are leaving. It's a depressing situation. It feels like our own provincial government is trying to make us fail.

I am not altogether familiar with the provincial political situation in Ontario regarding support for farmers. Do you feel there is sufficient support for farmers in Ontario?

 

[Jay]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by support.

Some farmers think they are getting the shaft and they like to block off the 401 highway over it. They would like to see more handouts I think.

Agriculturial markets are something I think needs to be protected in order to be able to produce a quility, ethical product. I do support not including these things in something like NAFTA.

Are you for or against the Wheat Board?

 

[Prairie_Ally]

RE: Saskatchewan Populati

Against, my reason being that they no longer represent real farmers, all the decisions are made my corporate execs who likely haven't ever set foot on a farm and have no awareness of agriculture whatsoever. And there seems to be more of an effort to monopolize the market on the Prairies especailly. To be honest though, I have never really looked into the arguments against the Wheat Board so I don't have a leg to stand on in regards to the Wheat Board debate.

The problem in Saskatchewan is that the NDP is constantly giving contracts to big companies like Monsanto, United Grain Growers, Maple Leaf Pork and the like. These companies (particularily Monsanto) have been creating quite a bit of problems for independant farmers. There are several government committees set up consisting of corporate employees from these groups with no membership given at all to independant farmers.

There is a really good book written by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called "Beyond Factory Farming: Corporate Hog Barns and the Threat to Public Health, the Environment and Rural Communities" and it explains a lot of the problems farmers face today and how government decisions, using the example of the pork industry, have hurt independant farmers and rural communities. I recommend reading it. It is actaully now available online at the following link:

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/National_Office_Pubs/hogbarns.pdf

 

[Lineman]

Factory Farming is an idea fueled by corporate type thinking. Do more with less. Unfortunately the age of the family farm is gone. Was it an inevitabilty? My relatives are from the Southeast corner of Manitoba. 20 years ago there were 21 small family farms in the area where today there are three "corporate type" farms. They could not survive the stagnation of grain and beef prices while their fuel and equipment costs skyrocketed. So it was "sell the land, keep 20 acres or so of the original homestead and move off to small manfacturing plants in Steinbach or other work in Winnipeg. Are they bitter? No, more like resigned to their fate. Kinda sad though to think about the family history of settling in the post war era, clearing land for years, never really prospering but doing well enough to not have to worry, and then when they're approaching retirement having to sell it all because the kids were all gone. It's a very different and quiet countryside now.
As for blaming one government over another....This happened regardless of who governed, NDP or Conservatives. Governments don't direct economic forces, we do, consumers. We also want more for less.

 

[Hank C]

I heard Sask has a new budget which includes 90 million in corporate tax cuts.... has their govt seen the light?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

What light is that, Hank?

 

[Hank C]

you know, the one shining from alberta

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Uh huh. Alberta can afford to do a lot of things Saskatchewan can't, thanks solely to the size of its oil and gas sector. It's not a matter of seeing the light, it's a matter of what's possible. Grant Devine tried to remake Saskatchewan in Alberta's image in the 1980s and just about bankrupted the province, while allowing many of his people to engage in nefarious activities (claims he knew nothing about them, so he's either a liar or very bad at the job) that resulted in a dozen or so of them doing jail time for misuse of public funds. Took Saskatchewan most of a decade to recover from that. That was at about the same time Bryan Mulroney was running up huge federal deficits that took Canada most of a decade to recover from... Conservative governments I've lived under recently have singularly failed to impress me.

No thanks.

 

[#juan]

you know, the one shining from alberta

I somehow get the feeling Hank, that you think Alberta's good fortune is because of the management genius of Ralph Klein and his balanced budgets. I'll let you in on a little secret. With the oil and gas revenue that Klein has access to, a chimpanzee could have balanced the budget. Some chimpanzees might even have asked for more money from the oil companies.

 

[tpp]

It amazes me how many have it so wrong. The reason Saskatchewan loses population is because its cities are deadbeats and the government’s corrupt. A person earning $20/hour eight hours/day five days/week for 50 weeks a year earns more than the average family income of Yorkton, SK. Western Saskatchewan is somewhat an anomaly being wealthier and having much fewer people than the eastern half of the province. Many communities in the west-central and southwest part of the province haven’t received government funding for roads, schools or healthcare for decades, not to mention they’re closer to Calgary or Edmonton than Regina or Saskatoon. Arguably you can call them Alberta's hinterlands. The only way you can drive to northwest Sask. is by taking Alberta’s Highway 63 to Fort Mac. The 14 kid family thing is a lie and I don’t know what the hell you're talking about. Two to three kids per family has been the norm for the past forty years.

No one invests in Saskatchewan because the taxes are high and the freight fees are literally $20 more per tonne compared to those in central Alberta. For example, Fort Saskatchewan, AB was recently chosen the site for a $65 million ethanol plant that will serve the entire Canadian prairies while the Government of Saskatchewan continues to waste millions subsidizing smaller facilites near the Manitoba border. A lot of the investment for the operation in Fort Sask. comes from actual Saskatchewan residents, not to mention a pasta plant operating in similar fashion elsewhere around Edmonton. As always, we’re literally fighting a battle with our own province.

 

[Western Canadian Chick]

As someone who is on their way out the Western door of Saskatchewan, I'll share the reasons why I'm planning to leave, because from everyone I've talked to in University, we all have pretty similar situations, and for some bizarre reason, people just can't seem to understand why the young are leaving.

1.) The province has taken action against University students leaving Saskatchewan by offering them high level job TERMS...okay so I've just spent $20+ grand to get an education, and I can either take a one year term with the Saskatchewan gov't (the only real employer here...if you don't believe me, look for a job!) that may or may not be renewed, and will likely never be more then a term position, because full time permanent jobs just don't happen in Saskatchewan OR I can take a job with an Alberta employer that is begging me to come, offering me a full time position where I stand a chance of paying off student debt. Granted the cost of living is higher, that's for sure...but news flash so are the wages, and even though in the end what I net might be the same or slightly smaller, at least its a job with a semblance of stability.

2.) If you ask any one in the baby boomer population why kids are leaving, they usually have no freaking clue, because they are sitting pretty with a high paying, full time gov't job with 6 weeks of vacation, and amazing benefits...unfortunately, they have taken all the good jobs. It is much harder to make a productive start these days then it was, because the baby boomers grew up at the perfect time when there were jobs aplenty, unfortunately, they took them all and left their kids nothing!

3.) I don't know the exact percentage, but when you add up all the people not contributing to taxes, and combine that with all the people who are living off of taxes, basically you get a very low percentage of people contributing a very high percentage of their income to taxes. And given the fact that there is a MASSIVE amount of baby boomers that are on the verge of retiring, and therefore contributing less to taxes, it is a scary situation for someone that is 24 to see, because frankly I don't want to pay the taxes of 3 or 4 people if I don't have to!

4.) Everyone else has moved, so why shouldn't I? That sounds stupid, right? I mean really, if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would I? No, but moving to Alberta doesn't lead to a broken neck! It's an honest truth that most people in my basic demographic (the white 18-35 year old that I read about in an earlier post) have moved to Alberta, including a large portion of my friends. Now I have nothing against older people, but frankly I want friends to be closer to my age, not older then my mom! There are a number of people moving back, its true, but they are generally much older then myself as well, really there just are not a lot of people my age here.

5.) The air of excitement and fun. Saskatchewan is a laid back easy going retirement province...I'm 24, I don't care! Alberta feels more exciting, the bars are better, the festivals are better, the shopping is better, the entertainment is better...or at least it seems that way, and lets face it, perception is often more powerful then reality. But I think that the reality is, is that when you see people your age having fun, its exciting, here I mostly see people in their 50's having fun...yeay? Sure I might spend more time driving to work in Alberta then I do in Saskatchewan...but that is because there are more PLACES and more PEOPLE to drive by.

6.) People seem more grounded in reality in Alberta then the do here. This idea might surprise people, but lets face it, for a province to have up roaring debates about daylight savings time for almost 4 decades means that the province really needs to get a life! I mean really, what does it say for us as a people, that we must argue an issue like that for almost 40 years? This province just never lets things go, if you do something, are think something, it just won't CHANGE.

7.) Change, oh my gosh I said the C-word!!! People here seem very anti change. I know some people aren't like it, but as a whole, this province is set in its ways and that's how it will stay.

All in all, there really isn't anything in Saskatchewan that isn't in Alberta, and that is why we move there rather then move to other provinces. Saskatchewan does have its advantages, it's a safe place to raise a family (although its the worst place to own a car, and the crime is high too) because you can spend more time at home then commuting. It's friendly, hard working, "homey" and there are activities, even though there aren't as much. Really its not that Saskatchewan is a BAD place to live, it's just not a GOOD place to live necessarily. And frankly if when I leave I hate it away, I'll just come back, but right now the grass is looking a lot greener on the other side of the fence...I guess its because the wheat is just so brown right now. I guess Saskatchewan's biggest problem is it is right next door to Alberta, because it is just so easy to leave with your friends and visit your family on the weekends.

 

[I think not]

you know, the one shining from alberta

I somehow get the feeling Hank, that you think Alberta's good fortune is because of the management genius of Ralph Klein and his balanced budgets. I'll let you in on a little secret. With the oil and gas revenue that Klein has access to, a chimpanzee could have balanced the budget. Some chimpanzees might even have asked for more money from the oil companies.

Did you just call Chavez a chimp? :lol: