Angela Hall, Leader-PostPublished: Tuesday, March 25, 2008
ESTEVAN -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper says provincial leaders who pursue a "confrontational" relationship with his federal government don't fare as well as ones willing to work together.
While Harper said federal money gets distributed fairly, he also said "the reality is that more gets done when governments work together than when they fight each other."
Harper cited the planned clean coal, carbon storage project near Estevan -- which will use $240 million in federal money -- as an example of what he called a "positive working relationship" between Ottawa and Saskatchewan under Premier Brad Wall's recently Saskatchewan Party government.
The previous NDP government in Saskatchewan and Harper's Conservative government had been frequently at odds over the equalization formula, with the province filing a constitutional challenge on the matter last year.
Both the NDP and the Sask. Party had lobbied for the removal of non renewable resource revenues from the equalization formula, but when the Conservatives did so in 2007 they also put in place an unforeseen cap on payments.
Saskatchewan, which had estimated it would get about $800 million federal equalization funds annually if the promise was kept, got $227 million last year and nothing this budget year.
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