Representative government a myth

Has anyone else wondered why our political leaders at every level of government give lip service to represent their constituents they seek support from only when they are campaigning for office or when forming the political opposition in the legislature?

Ritually, leaders of political parties promise and promise some more during a campaign knowing all along the electorate has no legal recourse to enforce the apparent lies they usually turn out to be after an election.

I recall reading that some court somewhere in our so-called democratic world has already ruled that politicians cannot be held responsible/accountable for what they promise in a campaign “to represent” the people. Again, another example of how the courts ride shotgun for the political system that appoints them.

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s (CBRM) constitutional case under former mayor John Morgan challenging the provincial government’s equalization distribution within this province and the recently denied Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform constitutional federal case regarding the Bank of Canada are but extralegal examples of how the courts protect governments from having to answer for their former decisions and policies to ordinary Canadians.

Both these cases were denied standing before a trial judge that would have had the accused governments justify and answer for how their application of the law follows the constitution. And both these appellants had asked the courts just for a declaration that the two levels of government were not complying with our Supreme Law: The Constitution.

A Nova Scotia Appeal court ruled that a tax-paying citizen or municipality does not have any constitutional right to sue our government for their behaviour, even when being accused of breaking the very constitutional law that must govern the government’s behaviour.

About a month ago, I telephoned my municipal councillor requesting him to introduce a motion, after first seeking out a seconder, calling upon the McNeil provincial government to act on its political party’s 2011 annual general meeting resolution to have the provincial auditor general do an audit of the federal equalization payments.

I emailed my councillor that resolution and another from 2012 that dealt with what would be considered a related outcome if the federally-provided municipal calculation (26 per cent of the $1.77 billion = approximately $460 million) was distributed to the eligible municipalities of this province.

My councillor’s response was that he first would have to run this by his associates. I disagreed and asked him to do what I requested ¬ or nothing was going to happen. Since then, I have heard nothing further ¬ only silence.

Our provincial government’s equalization program only distributes $32 million to the 42 eligible municipalities. How is this meagre amount each year going to strengthen the federally identified fiscal weakness of the municipalities recognized by the yearly federally provided $460 million? Where and on what is the remainder ($460 - $32 = $428 million) of that federal funding each year being spent on over these many years?

Our CBRM councillors, provincial MLAs and federal MPs are witnessing in silence the accumulated compound economic damages of underfunding to this municipality over the years (and the others in this province) by the yearly indefensible and unconstitutional political manipulations of these equalization payments.

I prefer to call it corruption/theft that political parties when forming governments are guilty of by denying the 42 economically disadvantaged municipalities of the federally provided constitutional funding they legally should receive each year.

With this unaccounted-for level of extralegal political shenanigans of the political parties, it is understandable why the Citizens Assembly a few years ago in British Columbia after almost a year of studying electoral reform decided on STV – Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation. http://citizensassembly.arts.ubc.ca/

However, unless the general public demands this electoral reform, representative government will remain a myth.

Charles W. Sampson Sydney Forks