CBRM needs citizen participation
In Joe Bushell’s letter to the editor on Sept. 19, “A Challenge for Clarke and MacSween” that discussed the elephant in the room, he claims our massively oversized municipal government, is the real reason we have extremely high taxes. However, I believe that what causes CBRM’s elephant in the room is councillors now think and act as if they have to manage the private sector.
This is why we have a big spending and high tax elephant — too many CBRMers vote for highly parasitic government employees to manage our economy through their government policies, rather than Cape Breton wealth being determined locally, provincially and federally by the real source of Canada’s wealth – private sector initiatives.
Politically perceived and managed elephants, are why private sector earnings and wealth is being taxed away and disposed of by a plethora of government employees who keep introducing new rules and regulations that have needed more and more employees to manage. This has resulted in a hugely unaffordable CBRM debt that has undermined the future of CBRM youth at home since Sysco and Devco were closed. The high taxes Cape Bretoners now pay to service the debt are sustained by rules and regulations that prevent our youth from becoming wealthy in Cape Breton, because too few have had the education, or earnings freedom to realize the benefits of new opportunities they will gain when their parents vote for changes in the way the CBRM spends.
Why? Because CBRM citizens and government employees, have become set in their ways. Very few have learned to accept the idea that individuals are the sources of wealth, through progressive growth in mind and values, but governments and teachers at all levels manage and are managed as if “they” are the source of wealth.
Therefore, to gain and learn to enjoy sustainable development in the CBRM and keep our children working at home in future years — this year — we must vote for a council that actually secures effective citizen participation in CBRM decision making and has the capacity for self correction. Only then can we bring the size of CBRM debt to a much lower level that frees up our children to develop new solutions on a much wider, more self-reliant and sustained basis, to financially support advancing technologies, rather than keeping on with politically regulated budgets, rules and systems that have prevented private sector job growth in Cape Breton, thereby causing 1,000 (mostly young) Cape Bretoners to leave in each of the last 20 years.