A question of balance : Assessment of the state of local government in Nova Scotia

This under-funding has arisen both because of the limited categories of expenditure included in the calculation of standard expenditure for each class of municipality and because the size of the grant pool is habitually less than the total entitlements generated by the formula. [...] He thought the lack of local institutions of a democratic character represented one of the leading causes of the recent uprisings and, indeed, of the relative poverty of the citizenry and of public life generally. [...] The stated purpose of this conference was the re-examination of the entire structure of provincial-municipal relations, beginning with the respective responsibilities of the two levels of government and then their appropriate financial resources. [...] The bulk of the increased provincial tax revenues was to come from the transfer to the Province of the taxation of non-residential (i.e., commercial and industrial) property. [...] While the Province of Nova Scotia argued in its 1993 discussion paper that one of the aims of the service exchange was to alleviate the fiscal pressures of the financially weak municipalities, it was the fiscally weakest grouping that faced the most significant fiscal burdens after the exchange.14 Even more dramatic was the impact of the exchange for the two urban areas that were about to be conso