There is a lot of misunderstanding about equalization payments. Western Canada is not against equalization payments. Western Canadian provinces like Alberts and Saskatchewan in particular have issues with the equalization formula. Quebec makes massive amounts of revenue with Quebec Hydro. This should be included in the determination of who receives equalization payments. Quebec is a wealthy province and they are taking money away from poorer provinces that need and deserve the money more.There are 5 people in Canada who understand how equalization works and how it works best. Everyone else is just playing political games by capitalizing on that ignorance and regional resentment for personal political power.
The rough outlines of Equalization are not all that hard to understand - it is only the natural resources part that is complex. First, it is a federal program, so the provincial governments contribute nothing (i.e, it is not a pooling and reallocation of revenues). All money spent on equalization comes from federal tax revenues - but of course, those federal revenues are higher on a per capita basis from provinces that are stronger economically.
You could fairly make an argument that provinces - as such - make no contribution at all to Equalization. The contributors are all taxpayers, personal and corporate, across Canada, plus federal non-tax revenues.
In essence, the system looks at the revenue-raising capacity of each province based on the national average of rates of taxation. To the extent that a province's revenue-generating capacity (essentially its economic activity x average rates of taxation) falls short of the national average per capita revenue-generating capacity, it receives payments to offset that gap, subject to a cap. The system doesn't care what a province's actual rates of taxation are, only what it could raise if it deployed the national average rates of taxation. Otherwise, you'd have all provinces giving a tax cut to their residents and then holding out their hand to Ottawa to make up the difference.
Where it gets complicated is the treatment of natural resource revenues. It used to be that natural resource revenues (except Alberta's because its fiscal capacity was such a big outlier) were included in the calculation. Now provinces receive the better outcome from either of two calculations: one that includes 50% of all provinces' resource revenues; and the other that excludes natural resource revenues altogether.