Quebec takes more money than all the other have-not provinces put together. They just suck up money and bitch. I've been listening to them threaten to leave for over thirty years. I used to believe in 'getting along' but now I want them to go. They waste so much political effort on their own vanity instead of becoming productive citizens that actually contribute. Get their own military, monetary system, heath care and welfare and good riddance.
It's depressing to know that because of them my tax dollars are subsidizing 600 person teams pumping out crap like Assasins Creed. It's the last straw.
The situation is not as simple as it seems.
The problem is basically two-fold. One, it is relative poverty. Very, very few people in Quebec make more than say, 100000$ per year. Combined with the large population, it results in bigger equalization payments as per federal rules.
That poverty has been a very long time in the making. The French settlers were cut off from their motherland, and never had any opportunity to found companies and acquire wealth. They remained poor and undermined, working for a rich English boss. It is not until the sixties or so that it truly began to change. Many workers in Quebec up to the fifties were basically treated almost like in the worst times of the industrial revolution. In the later half of the 19th century,
1/3rd of the population emigrated to the United States, so much that most any American today has one of them as a great-great-grandparent.
The result of that was that when the unions started gaining power, people overwhelmingly supported them. But they gained far too much power.
The problem isn't Quebec people, it is the unions. They are the true enemy. Whoever is the premier or government is just a puppet doing the bidding of the CSN and the FTQ, who will do anything to keep as many entitlements as possible, and are responsible for the cases of severe corruption that you've probably heard of. They are the one sabotaging any attempt at getting things under control.
And as far as I can see, Ontario is almost there with its unions as well.
As for Montreal and the tax breaks, I really dislike them, but it is beneficial for the various levels of government to have a more prosperous Montreal. If they weren't given to them, they would simply would exist in another have not province. In 1996, Quebec competed with New Brunswick to get Ubi Soft to found a studio in their province. Quebec won.
Ontario has started such subsidies to studios like Ubi Soft as well.