We just want what we want

We're going to have to make a hard decision about the Atlantic Accord and equalization payments.

The eight- to 16-year accord allows us to keep 100 per cent of petroleum resource royalties without a clawback under the old equalization program. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tories’ new program puts a cap on the clawback protection, depending on how much we get in royalties and how well the better off provinces are doing.

It's fair.

Either way we win.

It's a matter of which is the better deal - and what's fair in the long term.

We want it both ways.

I suspect Nova Scotia doesn't have much support outside Atlantic Canada. I get the feeling the other folks in the federation think of us - if they think of us at all - as quaint, maybe lazy, sort of like a bunch of Smurfs.

People don't realize we may appear slower here because we're here for the long term. Nova Scotia has been Europeanized for four centuries, and those of us who've stayed or have come here see a future of at least as long a time ahead. So, we feel we can - and, indeed, have to - pace ourselves.

This isn't necessarily true of newer, resource-based or huge urban communities across the country; where people arrive to make their bundles and then leave.

Some economic and political pundits think folks will just have to follow the markets, just as the First Nations followed the wildlife herds.

If market forces were the only law ruling the country and society, we'd all be living in one huge maze, swindling each other out of every last penny like a rookery of thieves.

That's not what human society and civilization is all about.

Federal centralization from day one has pulled people and companies out of this region - Bank of Nova Scotia and Royal Bank just two of many. People were encouraged to follow the jobs or to head out and settle the west.

In recent decades, Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia benefited from the education reforms of Nova Scotia premiers Angus L. Macdonald and Robert Stanfield. For example, Alberta got trained and educated teachers, nurses, doctors, machinists, engineers and other professionals and trades people free - at our expense. Meanwhile, we lost our skilled people - and our demographic critical mass. We send out young trained people; older ones return.

During his premiership here, John Hamm tried to correct the effects in his campaign for fairness in health and post secondary education funding.

We're still faced with industrial centralization when it's time to close a rail car maker, poultry processing plant or chocolate factory. It's not that people don't use railcars or eat chicken any more, it's just that we're too far from the centre of a purposely centralized country.

As one former cabinet minister told me during a previous tussle with the feds over something many years ago “we don't care what's fair, we just want to get what we want.”

Well, fairness isn't just the here and now, or even in the near or not-so-near future. It's got to take into consideration the federal policies of the past - actions that continue to affect us to this day.

We don't have a rock solid claim to the best of both sides of the accord issue, but there is corrective work to be done. It's only for a maximum of 16 years, compared to the length of Confederation.

Decentralization of the federation being a Tory policy, it suits their long-term goal, too.