Cape Breton is cash-strapped and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) is trying to operate on $147 million per year.

Meanwhile, the provincial government has revenue streams that CBRM is being denied. Why is this?

Nova Scotia Power Inc. (NSPI), for instance, has $4.1 billion in assets here in Nova Scotia and CBRM has a large percentage of these assets. Lingan has a coalfired power plant producing 620 megawatts (MWs) of power and the Point Aconi plant produces 171 MW’s of power. Then we have the Muskrat Falls project infrastructure in Point Aconi and on the top on Morley Road, as well as major infrastructure on Townsend Street in Sydney.

The dollar amount of Nova Scotia Power’s assets on Cape Breton is massive, yet there are no taxes paid to CBRM or Cape Breton by Nova Scotia Power. Instead, there is a special deal in place with the provincial government that allows NSPI to pay a fraction of the commercial taxation rate to the province directly.

The province funds the provincial equalization program (now called Municipality Capacity Fund) with this extremely low taxation. It then puts the $2 billion in general revenue from the federal equalization program for the province to spend as it wishes while we in CBRM receive only $15 million from both equalization programs (provincial and federal).

In fact, we should be receiving our commercial taxation from NSPI as well our fair share of the federal equalization program.

CBRM would greatly benefit from tax revenues from our Nova Scotia Power assets that are in our municipality. We must maintain the roads, water, sewer, snow removal, maintenance, etc., to these properties on our dime and yet we receive zero in taxation for NSPI.

Why did our politicians make such a poor deal for the CBRM and Cape Breton? Why does a private company receive such concessions on our backs when we are in such a dire need of additional revenues in this municipality? How can our government be so favorable to one business while other businesses must pay their fair share? Why is NSPI and its shareholders being subsidized by municipal taxpayers when we cannot afford it? And then we watch as the principals of NSPI earn large salaries including the Emera CEO who made over $5.76 million in 2018. That is over the top when our municipality is in such dire need of that commercial tax revenue.

We must wake up Cape Breton and we must demand to be treated equally and fairly by our governments. Other Canadian cities with populations to CBRM (around 100,000) have revenues and expenses around $420 million per year while the CBRM is operating on $147 million per year. We are being cheated out of $250 million per year by our own provincial government. Start to apply pressure to your elected officials on these issues because we have been too quiet for far too long now and we are suffering because of this situation.

CBRM has mass out-migration, high unemployment, high taxation rates, high poverty, failing infrastructure, etc., and because of our problems Nova Scotia receives more funding each year to help us, but we never see it. When will we wake up?

Dr. Rev. Albert Maroun

Sydney