You Can't Trust Paul Martin

It's hard enough trusting a Liberal. Paul Martin has shown yet again that he can't be trusted.

Currently the structure of the equalization payment calls for Ottawa to clawback resource revenues from provinces that receive equalization money. As such, when Newfoundland, which had wallowed with a weak economy for years, started drilling for oil, Ottawa kept 85% of the new revenues for Newfoundland. Not only does this effectively castrate the incentive to develop Newfoundland's economy, it also keeps Newfoundland with a weak economy.

At the begining of the Federal Election campaign in May, Stephen Haper promised to let Newfoundland keep its oil revenues. Harper wanted to give Newfoundland the abilty to climb out of its culture of defeat (to use Harper's words) or culture of dependence (to use Martin's words).

With weak polling numbers at the midpoint of the campaign, Martin flip-flopped and promised to give Newfoundland its oil revenues.

Yesterday, Martin reneged on that deal leading to Danny Williams (Newfoundland's Premier) walking out of the equalization conference.

Surely Mr. Martin doesn't want to keep taking a poor province's money, making it more dependant than ever on Ottawa, and preventing that province from being able to build itself to economic prosperity.