Please allow me the liberty of quoting at length the last paragraph in Mr. MacLean’s editorial. Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the innocent: 

“This country has many senior rank economists, including ones in Atlantic Canada, possessing great expertise on federal-provincial relations. Wouldn’t it be better if our newspapers paid more attention to their scholarly research on equalization and less attention to biased opinion pieces by junior rank policy advocates? Wouldn’t it be better if the Atlantic provinces could be represented by economists based there rather than by Mr. MacLean, an Ontario-based and -educated author of studies advocating socialism in Asia?” 

Am I the only one who finds the implications of this line of thinking appalling? 

Ken Boessenkool, author of Taking off the Shackles: Equalization and the Development of Nonrenewable Resources in Atlantic Canada, and co-author of The Alberta Agenda, a proposal for Alberta to make greater use of its constitutional jurisdiction, Calgary.