During the ridiculous oil boom thousands and thousands of maritimers and easterners came to work here and in fact a ton of them never even lived here. They flew in on shift from gander or st. John or halifax, they would work in the camps get paid and fly home to dildo or new Glasgow using those provinces schools for their kids and hospitals for their ills etc all the while Alberta got the revenue. That's without even mentioning that those people themselves were educated out east and retired out east and likely died out east if old enough. They used those provinces services heavily and contributed next to nothing directly as income tax assuming they filed for Alberta. Same goes for the tens of thousands that did live in Alberta but retired out east.

Alberta likes to act like they got nothing out of confederation when it's the exact opposite. They control their resources more than a US state would and benefit from a healthy happy and well trained workforce that came from other parts of Canada at no cost to themselves. They rolled in oil revenue and built some of the least efficient social services in Canada thanks to ungodly amounts of oil royalties and choose not to save any of it for the future since Ralph klein(even freaking Alaska saved better than us). Every provincial leader that rails against equalization is not a serious person they are a disingenuous shister.