CBRM could benefit from a local premier

The future of Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) should not depend on the political fortunes of one person, no matter to which party the person belongs. However, it stands to reason that anyone from CBRM would have the advantage of not being ignorant as to the humanitarian emergency that engulfs our municipality.

Would such a person at least try to lobby for the well-being of our municipality while being in Halifax? We cannot know the answer for certain but if one day a local becomes premier we might see a fair amount of transfers from the national tax revenues coming into our municipality which are supposed to help those provinces -and their municipalities - in more need so they can have equal quality services in health and education.

The current municipal council has sought to have a city charter but stronger – far stronger - advocacy is needed in Halifax. It is a fact that Nova Scotia has gone from being one of the richest provinces before confederation to being the poorest by 1930 and that its economic engine - Cape Breton - is now one of the poorest areas in the country, so much that if the population of the CBRM had some sort of status as first nations, refugees and new Canadians have, the CBRM would long ago have been declared as being, at the very least, in a state of emergency due the high risk in which our youth and children find themselves living.

I might be wrong and naïve but we might have a shot if people from this municipality were to run for the leaderships of the main three political parties and one day become premiers. Maybe then the gross and blatant discrimination and abuse by negligence that the youth and children of this municipality are suffering would not one of these days - become the object of international shame for Canada. Rev. Julio C. Martin North Sydney