Charles Sampson's letter to the Editor. A rebuttal to Minister Mombourquette's "Minister weighs in on Cape Breton equalization controversy" article in the CB Post, May 8th.

Read the Ministers article here.

Dear Editor: 

The ongoing government manipulation of the Equalization issue continues with Minister Derek Mombourquette’s misinformation and lying by omission in the C.B. Post, May 9, “Minister weighs in on equalization.” 

Minister Mombourquette’s explanation implies Nova Scotians outside the Capital Region are going to believe his spin when he says the federal Equalization payments of $1,838,000,000 have absolutely nothing to do with the grossly inadequate $15,335,838 provincial equalization grant received by the CBRM from the provincial government.  He then fails to be honest enough and include this is all clawed back, and sometimes more, by the provincial government.

According to the minister, this huge sum of federal equalization money simply from putting it all into general revenues is somehow magically no longer subject to the law enshrined in the Constitution Act, 1982.   Complicit in this manipulation of the public trust is the federal government, too, when it transfers this money without requiring any accountability, whatsoever.  

Minister Mombourquette goes on to tell the public the $15 million received by the CBRM is NOT from the federal Equalization but “partly from the Nova Scotia Power grant-in-lieu (of property tax) program and partly from general revenue from the province.” 

The minister then opens up a government scheme of further manipulation whereby the N.S. Power Corp. in the provincial government’s 2003 budget in a “special deal” with the province could pay its property taxes to the government directly rather than to the municipal units it had its assets located in.   That the N.S. Power Corp. property taxes paid to the government was partly used to finance the province’s inadequate equalization grant added insult to injury because the minister knows from being a former councillor of the CBRM that at that time this municipality was the location of almost half of the Nova Scotia Power’s facilities.  This was a further attack on the finances of the CBRM and any so-alleged equalization funding from the provincial grant was really a property tax stolen from the municipal units.   

Minister Mombourquette stated, “We have researched communities all over the country and there is no situation across Canada where a province that receives equalization money has it flow directly into a specific community or broken up and moved into specific communities.” 

Well, minister, we challenge you to prove that statement and show that the federal Equalization billions doesn’t mostly flow into the Capital Region? 

In closing, the minister conveniently avoids the federally calculated percent of the total Equalization payments that are federally provided and generated by this province’s municipal fiscal deficiency in their tax capacity related to property.  That percent represented 26.8 percent or $379 million of the total federal Equalization payments of $1.417 billion in 2011-12, according to the finance minister of that time.  That approximate percent (26%) was corroborated in a letter from a federal finance department official. 

The comments by Minister Mombourquette clearly show that government has with this manipulated agenda the objective to under-finance the municipal areas outside the Capital Region to ensure its continued funding of the federal Equalization payments that can be directed precisely to the Capital Region, a government policy he claims he couldn’t find anywhere in Canada.   

Sometimes minister, people cannot see the forest for the trees all around them.   

Yours truly, 

Charles W. Sampson 

NSTU Member 

42 Hayden Road 

Sydney Forks, N.S. 

B1L 1A2 

Home phone:  902-564-6008