To the Editor, 

For some years I have been an active supporter of the local protest movement 'Nova Scotians for Equalization Fairness'. Recently I received from my friend Parker Donham a strong frontal attack on the movement.  As is usually the case, I found the arguments offered by Parker thought-provoking and wish to offer here a closer examination of the strong critique offered on his always informative (and often fun) blog "The Contrarian". His original piece is too lengthy to quote in detail here and I encourage readers to see Parker's full original at his blog. [Read his blog here] The following is written to provide a different perspective in favour of the Nova Scotians for Equalization Fairness protest movement.  

Parker bases most of his argument on the fact that the province is under no legal obligation to use Federal Transfers to assist municipalities to provide roughly equal municipal services for roughly equal rates of property taxation. In this dependence on the state of current legal arrangments, there may be too large a reliance on legal versus moral obligations? While acknowledging that current Municipal transfers are no way adequate to bring have-not areas close to the level of services offered in HRM (aka the Capital City zone), he does not examine in detail either the severity of the municipal service deficits suffered by have-not municipalities, nor their relative tax burdens. But his claim that Cape Breton usually receives more than half of the smaller municipal transfers suggest, given the rapidly deteriorating physical and social infrastructure of have not municipalities like Cape Breton, that this fund is just too small. This, in turn, makes the question of how the province uses its revenues all the more important. And in particular highlights the need for much more openness on the province's actual use of its "General Revenues". 

His accounting of where total provincial revenues go is informative, and it needs to be held constantly before our eyes. But here too some important questions are begged. Instead of claiming that  "It’s fair to say that Cape Breton receives hundreds of millions of dollars per year in provincial services of the kind Casey enumerates, " and passing on, let's check into that! What actually is the allotment of these provincial services of the kind Casey enumerates? Are they roughly proportionate to our Cape Breton population? (HERESY ALERT: Perhaps we are even over-funded?) What about other areas in need? Yarmouth, Springhill, Mulgrave, etc. Surely in this day of computerized accounts a clear picture could quite easily be given Or will provincial authorities fall back on the Facebook defense 'it's complicated; it could take us 90 days to delete your account fully' (Really Mr. Zuckerberg! 90 days? How about 90 seconds!) 

And I am strongly opposed to supporting either the Fed's or Province's laxity in the actual use of delegated funds. Surely most Canadians expect Federal Health Transfers to be spent on Health! Few of our fellow citizens have access to the detailed information an experienced journalist like Parker can access, but I doubt most would so casually accept the cavalier and slightly larcenous diversion of delegated funds for health or other purposes into the murky cloud of "general revenues."  Of course, anyone and everyone can call "poor"! And if we don't figure out ways to get our resources to market while protecting our environment, it will get quite easy to do so in the years ahead. (Whoever imagined mighty Ontario would so quickly become a "have-not" province in the Federal interprovincial transfer scheme; or impoverished Newfoundland a "have" province- if only for a time.) But the spirit behind this large Federal Transfer scheme was clearly not to encourage provinces to accept huge transfers to grow just their capital cities or to hide provincial revenue flows and their actual uses from their own citizens.  

At a minimum, let's get the actual provincial expenditures for "these services" of the kind Minister Casey alludes to out on the table. Out in the open. Isn't that what transparency in government is all about? 

Let's see a disclosure of provincial expenditures by the department and by the county for the last 10 years! These accounts are computerized and broken down by all imaginable variables in electronic spreadsheets held by the Department of Finance. We are only talking about a few mouse clicks here - if the political will to be open and honest with Nova Scotia's citizens exists. 

This accounting might go far in settling the claim of unfair treatment of municipalities outside HRM. It might even encourage more efficient, just, and transparent use of the monies now routinely stashed away in General Revenues. 

What does the province have to hide? 

Brian Richard Joseph

North Sydney