Should we working for democracy this morning, but saw something in my morning perusal of Macleans online (which is really great, btw), I saw this story about the NDPs budget demands and my blood started to boil a little bit.

Good to see Jack getting out and setting parameters for NDP support for the budget. And I guess it's smart politics to make a solid pitch to win Saskatchewan seats, after all they are eminently winnable. But calling for the exclusion of resource revenues from the equalization is bad policy and not in line with NDP values.

Why? Because this would royally screw my beloved home province and is not in the spirit of the constitution.

Subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution states that "Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making Equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."

I fail to see how excluding oil and gas revenues, which as Canada inevitably becomes an energy superpower will definitely become and bigger component of provincial budgets, from the equalization formula helps equalize provincial services.

In the interests of fairness, the NDP should be calling for nothing less than a 10-province standard that includes all provincial revenues. Anything else, in an era of rising energy prices, is unfair. If the goal of equalization is to allow provinces to provide equal services at comparable taxation levels, then you can't exclude the huge pile of petro-dollars in their coffers from the calculation. To do so will prevent provinces with no oil or gas, like poor little PEI, from having the same fiscal capacity as other provinces.

The biggest irony is that PEI might have the most forward looking energy and environmental policies of any provincial government. Despite an ongoing fiscal crunch, PEI has made investment in wind power a priority and are set to be leaders in this industry, that I thought Jack Layton supported.

The NDP is no more likely to win seats in PEI than they are in the Saguenay or Missisauga or Calgary, but that doesn't mean they should not get behind a fair equalization system that works for all Canadians.