Columns and Letters

Letter: When the rule of law is not followed

Dear editor,

The Nova Scotia government in the last 10 years (2007-8 to 2016-17) will have received approximately $16.349 billion in federal equalization, according to the federal government website.

Each N.S. provincial government over those years upon receiving such funding has taken a very small amount from it to form the provincial equalization program of approximately $32 million a year to total $320 million.

This has left a whopping $16 billion plus for provincial governments to manipulate for their political benefit. The evidence of such obvious political spending is everywhere as many citizens outside the HRM are being deprived of their federally calculated share of the federal equalization funding. 

The Constitution Act, 1982, s.36 (2) states: “Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principal of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.” 

The federal government’s funding “commitment” is apparently being met by its approximately 25+ per cent or $4 billion plus of its equalization payments “to ensure” those disadvantaged municipal governments identified in this province as fiscally unable to raise sufficient revenues from their tax base to provide public services at the national standard.  

But the federal government’s “commitment” is blatantly being constitutionally breached when it transfers this funding unconditionally. Attempts to have the federal government provide the constitutional authority for transferring these equalization funds unconditionally have failed. 

That’s because there is no constitutional provision for an unconditional transfer of these equalization payments entrenched in s. 36 of the Constitution Act 1982.  

When former CBRM mayor John Morgan tried to have the court/legal system enforce this constitutional commitment and free citizens from the political manipulations experienced over the years from all the three political parties that were in power, the legal system failed those residents in each of the disadvantaged municipalities when it did its job of preventing this legal matter from being allowed to proceed and subsequently decided in a trial. 

The governments controlling equalization payments at both levels know that allowing the presentation of this government data in a trial format that it would be very difficult to justify the current under funding of most disadvantaged municipalities in this province and still be in compliance with the Constitution Act 1982. 

After all, having our elected representatives abiding by the laws they have made is too much of an expectation to give citizens this power. Apparently that democratic prospect had to be avoided as all costs. 

Saul D. Alinsky reminds us that since politicians pose themselves as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law and justice only for us to find these can be perfect strangers to each other at times like this.    

A publicly expressed criticism that the court/legal system in Nova Scotia does not have “tree shakers” proved all too true. The reality that justices are political appointees offers more substance for the absence of tree shakers in our legal system. 

In fact, the N.S. Court of Appeal decision May 8th,2009, offers the following bizarre conclusion: “In an appropriate context, s. 36 might represent a justiciable commitment, but only among the federal and provincial governments who were privy to the agreement (emphasis added) that is represented by s. 36. It is not actionable by an individual or municipality such as the CBRM.”

According to this opinion/ruling, the constitution is not the citizens’ legal document it must be to use as their evaluating device to judge whether their elected representatives are following the supreme laws of this land – our Constitution. 

Apparently s. 36, although entrenched in the Canadian Constitution, somehow, in this opinion, is exclusively only the property of the two levels of government that can decide to, or not to, follow this law. That citizens as individuals or as a group who live in economically disadvantaged municipalities in this province have consequently no constitutional enforceable rights to equalization funding and are instead left to the political machinations of the ruling politicians who form government to do as they wish is now the legal reality.

Given such political manipulations and our muted elected representatives: councillors, local provincial MLAs and local federal MPs, how can citizens expect anything other than the unfairly high municipal and commercial tax rates now being paid and poorer quality public services?

Yours truly,

Charles W. Sampson

Sydney Forks


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