Category: Nova Scotia Election
Death of a destructive lawsuit
The Supreme Court of Canada refusal to hear the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s equalization lawsuit was not as predictable as the rising of the sun this morning. But it was close.
The lawsuit was cynical ploy by a mayor who likes to posture as a scrapper for the little guy, but refuses to do the hard work needed to reach political solutions to the little guy’s problems.
- Contrary to popular belief, even a total victory for CBRM would not have brought the municipality a single dime. It didn’t even ask for money.
- In any case, the lawsuit had no chance of success. Aside from Mayor John Morgan and his pricey Toronto constitutional lawyer, Contrarian has been unable to find a single lawyer who thought it had any chance of success.
- Although the case suffered a mercifully early death—it was thrown out before trial—the mayor’s insistence on appealing to the highest court in the land frittered away at least $500,000 in legal bills, and wasted three five years that could better have been spent seeking a political solution. During that time, CBRM ran up another $60 million $100 million in debt its citizens cannot afford.
- The mayor now says he will seek a political solution, but he is playing a weaker hand, having demonstrated that his constitutional claims lack legal validity.
I believe the municipality has a case for greater provincial assistance in meeting basic service needs. I hope the Dexter Government, financially strapped as it is, gives the problem a fair hearing. But the mayor’s legal adventure not only delayed a solution, it encouraged the worst impulses of Cape Breton’s culture of dependency, and it reinforced the rest of the world’s weary stereotype of Cape Bretoners as people with their hands out. In all these respects, it did a disservice to the very citizens Morgan claims to champion.
Elaboration after the jump.
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Anti-establishment poseur with an establishment job
Jane Purves writes:
I’m amazed that a man who has been mayor, i.e., in the higher echelons of the establishment, for what? ten years? can still get away with being considered anti-establishment.
Barrow, MacFadden, and ‘Suitcase’ Simpson: the final chapter
Extortion.
That’s how the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia obtained the money it would be blocked from using by a government bill introduced in the legislature Tuesday. Liberal leader Stephen McNeil should think hard before crying victim.
Justice Minister Ross Landry, who introduced the bill, suggested the Liberals give the tainted funds to charity. A better idea would be to give it back to the provincial treasury, because that’s who they stole it from.
McNeil may think voters’ memories are too short to remember the details, but a few of us old coots are still around to remind them.
The money in question came from two ‘trust’ accounts, the Hawco and Howmur Funds. They came to light in the 1983 influence-peddling trial of three Nova Scotia Liberal Party fundraisers, Sen. Augustus Irvine Barrow, Clarence MacFadden, and the colorfully named James G. “Suitcase” Simpson.
The three bagmen oversaw a Liberal Party toll-gating scheme from 1970 to 1978, while Gerald Regan was premier. As the Supreme Court of Canada (R. v. Barrow, [1987] 2 S.C.R. 694) described it:
In October of 1970, the liberal party defeated the then Government of Nova Scotia in a general election and formed the new government which held power until 1978. During the period from 1970 to 1978, the Committee collected contributions amounting in total to $3,836,468.13, of which $2,770,773.52 was deposited in one bank account and $1,065,694.61 in the other. A police investigation commenced in the autumn of 1978 resulted in the seizure of many documents from government departments and agencies and also from several wineries, distilleries and other corporations. The evidence revealed that the contributions made by liquor and wine companies dealing with the government were based on a fixed amount per case of products sold to the Government. Other companies doing business with the government paid a percentage of monies they received from government work which ranged from three to five per cent.
Simpson plead guilty and paid a $75,000 fine. MacFadden and Barrow were found guilty at trial; MacFadden paid a $25,000 fine, but Barrow, for whom conviction would have meant expulsion from the Senate, appealed and won a new trial on a technicality. He was acquitted at a second trial.
At the first trial, Hugh Rynard, president of Acres Consulting Services Ltd., testified:
One of my functions was to insure that we as a company did whatever was necessary to improve our ability both in obtaining work and in execution of our work. And I was told that it would be in order for me to seek an appointment with Mr. Barrow.
Rynard and Barrow met on March 7, 1973 so Rynard could pitch the bagman on the company’s expertise. According to Rynard’s undisputed testimony, Barrow:
told me during that conversation that we would be expected to pay from three percent to five percent of the fees generated from Provincial Government work to the . . . into the coffers of the Liberal Party.
For years, the Liberal Party used interest off these secret funds to finance campaigns and, in at least one notorious example, to pay a secret salary to Liberal leader Vince MacLean.
The funds returned to the public spotlight in the early nineties, thanks to late George Hawkins, a courageous Liberal who spent years trying to convince fellow Party members to give up their ill-gotten gains, and apologize for taking them in the first place. “Since the beginning of the Regan administration,” Hawkins said, “the Liberal Party… has been living… from the proceeds of crime.”
Even before the Barrow-MacFadden trial, Hawkins knew the source of the money because, ironically, his father, a Liberal stalwart, had set up one of the funds. There is little doubt that Nova Scotia Conservatives carried out similar shakedowns during the Robert Stanfield and G.I. Smith administrations, but the party’s financial records were destroyed in a mysterious fire around the time the RCMP began making inquiries.
Thanks to pressure from Hawkins, the Liberal Party eventually agreed to audit the funds, and relinquish to the province any money that proved tainted. But as Kings College Journalism prof. Steven Kimber recounts, the party’s actions fell short of this promise:
After another year of obfuscating, the party released its so-called “audit,” which wasn’t. Instead, the auditors, “as specifically agreed,” only perused the actual trial transcript and identified $1,287,473.14 “proven or alleged to have been obtained” through kickbacks. “This procedure,” the auditors noted dryly, “does not constitute an audit.”
Liberal House Leader Manning MacDonald likes to pretend the funds were “cleansed many years ago” through this process, but this is malarkey. Most, if not all of the money that remains in the funds was stolen from the taxpayers of Nova Scotia.
Steven McNeil has a decision to make. Will he continue the long tradition of lying about the source of this money? Or will he support Bill 44, a measure that would finally put this sordid chapter of our history to rest?
A way out of a wrongheaded promise
I’ve criticized the NDP’s carbon subsidy (here, here, and here,), but I understand the value of keeping campaign promises, even dumb ones. In my contrary view, public cynicism about politicians is so deep, it threatens to destroy the minimal level of public trust democracy needs to survive. This may be why the Tories and the Parliamentary Press Gallery have been so successful at drumming up absurd faux-outrage at the prospect of a fall election.
So even as two of the Dexter government’s promises (keeping all rural emergency rooms open and using tax rebates to encourage electricity consumption) make me shudder, I can’t help but admire Dexter’s determination to implement them.
Contrarian’s friend Mike Targett suggests a way out of this self-set trap:
While the NDP’s home insulation & energy-efficiency improvement program for low-income earners is a good idea, the electricity rebate is an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy that will likely encourage wasteful consumption precisely because it is not targeted at those in need.
Here’s my idea: those on one side of the wage gap donate their rebate to a fund that feeds into the energy-efficiency program for low-incomers. This fund could be set up by a charity or the province itself. If only 6 or 7 thousand people did this, it would double the program’s current budget.
How about it, Darrell?
On the debate over the Wark Principle, Targett adds:
Home-heat is a necessity; carbon emissions are not. A carbon tax (exempt low-incomers) would fund renewable energy development in order to decouple energy from carbon. Of course, as we’ve seen, it can’t be called a tax. Since averting climate catastrophe ensures a livable future for our children and grandchildren, we could just call it an RFSP: Registered Future Saving Plan.
Helping the poor (and everyone else) burn dirty coal
Bruce Wark’s defense of the NDP subsidy on dirty, coal-fired electricity as a way to help the poor drew fire from several readers. In a minute, one reader corrects a factual error that tripped up both Wark and Contrarian. But what most objected to what is we might call The Wark Principle:
You don’t tax necessities, then ask poor people to apply for rebates. That’s why we don’t tax groceries. How is electricity any different?
Contrarian reader Martin MacKinnon thinks Wark’s objection to taxing necessities is ill-considered:
There are indeed far too many Nova Scotians who can ill afford the necessities of life. However, why should the rest of us benefit from their poverty? Wark seems to miss an important point. If those of us (including Wark and I) who could well afford to, do not pay tax on power, then governments who need to pay for things like health care and education will have to collect those taxes elsewhere. We need tax breaks for the necessities of life to be targeted at those who need help, not at the rest of us who don’t.
After the jump, a more vehement reader, and a factual correction.
Auditor General slams H1N1 readiness
Civil servants are happy with the Dexter Government’s methodical approach to policy because ministers are listening carefully to policy advice and deliberating before acting.
But the issues keep coming, whether government’s ready to act or not. The risk of Dexter’s approach is that ministers may fall into reactive mode, moving from crisis to crisis rather than driving the new government’s policy agenda.
We have already seen Health Minister Maureen MacDonald struggling with the discovery that she cannot wish away the problem of rural emergency room closures, as she and the party assured voters they could during the election. (More on this soon.)
Today, the government faces an alarming report from Auditor General Jacques LaPointe sharply critical of the province’s readiness to deal with the unfolding H1N1 epidemic. He urges “immediate” action to address key deficiencies:
- No one is authorized to exercise overall command and coordination over government’s response to a serious pandemic.
- No central agency has responsibility or authority to to ensure critical government and non-government services such as power, water, snow clearing, policing and fire response continue during a time when absenteeism may be high.
- The province has not assessed the adequacy of pandemic response plans by district health authorities, which provide hospital-based health care service.
- 55 percent of family and emergency room doctors surveyed by the AG were “not happy” with their ability to obtain critical supplies.
Moneyquote:
Given that we are currently experiencing an H1N1 pandemic, we feel most of our recommendations should be addressed immediately to ensure Nova Scotia responds effectively to the current situation and is ready for any worsening conditions.
An early test for the NDP government
Is Peter MacKay channelling John Buchanan? Is Stephen Harper keen to cultivate a second Danny Williams in Atlantic Canada?
Those are two possible explanations of the Harper Government’s mean-spirited, post-election reversal of its commitment to help fund the $40-million, four-rink arena planned for Bedford.
The Conservative about-face presents an early test for Darrell Dexter’s Government.
Last month, the feds assured HRM officials that the project was on track to receive $15 million in infrastructure funding from Ottawa’s stimulus program. The NDP Government likewise committed $15 million, and HRM was to finance the remainder. Last Friday, Ottawa abruptly informed city hall it no longer considered the project eligible under the infrastructure program. [See: AllNovaScotia.com — subscription only.]
Coming hot on the heels of the Harper Government’s lopsided rejection of paving projects in non-Tory Nova Scotia ridings, the reversal smacks of political punishment. South End Councilor Sue Uteck drew a direct line between the sudden federal disavowal and the June 9 election of and NDP government—including former Conservative cabinet minister Len Goucher’s defeat at the hands of Liberal Kelly Regan. Regan is married to Liberal MP Geough Regan.
Insiders say Dan O’Connor, Dexter’s chief of staff, has taken pains to cultivate a working relationship with MacKay chief of staff John MacDonnell. Whether those efforts are sufficient to give MacKay second thoughts about this latest bit of federal Conservative pettiness may foreshadow the state of Canada-Nova Scotia relations for the duration of the Harper government.
Paving the way for Tories – another view [cont.]
The indefatigable Wallace J. McLean (note correct spelling; mea culpa) has risen to contrarian’s challenge, and defended his view that the MacDonald government’s paving proposals were as politically skewed as the Harper government’s selective approvals thereof.
This time he buttresses his case with a map, using traditional party colors in two shades: darker for ridings in which the government proposed paving; lighter for those where it did not.
Turning this map back into numbers, the Rodney government proposed work in two out of six rural Liberal districts (33%); three out of eight rural NDP districts (38%), and 13 out of 21 rural PC districts. That’s 62% of them.
Contrarian concedes that McLean has demonstrated a provincial Tory skew from which many will impute deliberate bias. But the provincial skew does not approach the 4-to-1 edge the Harper-MacKay Reformers Conservatives bestowed upon their own ridings. In either case, the new NDP administration has a chance to banish this ancient and corrupt system by implementing its promise of a five year paving plan to get the politics out of paving..
Greens face imminent deregistration – Update
Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch’s annual report has been posted, and it confirms our report last week that she has initiated deregistration proceedings against the Green Party for failure to comply with financial disclosure laws.
As the chart above shows, the failure appears to be complete across the board: No audited financial statements, no public access thereto, and no copies or accounting of tax receipts. The Green Party of Nova Scotia received $133,469.90 in public financing last year.
McCulloch’s report doesn’t say when deregistration will take effect, but over the weekend party officials told contrarian they had until July 17 to avoid losing official party status.
‘Reckless and inflammatory’ references to Epstein’s Judaism
Jay Wilson challenges contrarian’s references to Howard Epstein’s Judaism:
In the article, “Howard’s end”, you referred to him being, “The only Jew currently serving in the legislature.” By itself, it’s an accurate statement, but something of a throwaway statement as well. By itself, it has little relevance unless you had a specific reason for putting it in. My assumption upon reading it was your desire for full disclosure of the facts.
Then in your most recent article entitled “You have my iPhone and I know where you are,” in reference to Kevin Miller losing his iPhone, you wrote, “…the chances of getting it back looked more and more like a Jewish environmentalist’s chances of getting into the Nova Scotia cabinet.”
It seems to me that you’re making the implication—saying it without really saying it—that Howard Epstein was passed over for cabinet, in some part, because he’s Jewish. Read more »
