It's never easy to sell a tax increase.
But the Nova Scotia NDP's decision to raise taxes in Tuesday's budget will be even more contentious against a backdrop of voter outrage over misuse of taxpayer money, the product of a chummy culture of secrecy and entitlement that has tainted politicians of all stripes.
Finance Minister Graham Steele said the province's dire financial situation forced the government to raise the harmonized sales tax two points - to 15 per cent, one of the highest consumption taxes in the country - and create a new and tougher tax bracket for top earners. It will also seek $772-million in savings over the next four years. Acknowledging public anger over politicians' spending, the budget makes specific reference to the $1.3-million the government says will be saved through more rigorous rules surrounding MLA expenses.
Driving the expenses cleanup is a February report by Auditor-General Jacques Lapointe, who, after a lengthy investigation, revealed numerous examples of inappropriate spending made possible by lax rules. One since-resigned politician had charged nearly $8,000 for a generator installed at his home; another expensed $13,455 for custom-built office furniture. Others charged the taxpayer for big-screen televisions and digital cameras.
Those purchases at least required receipts, allowing Mr. Lapointe to assess their validity. But he wasn't able to probe some spending because it did not require documentation. Politicians were simply handed tens of thousands of dollars each in annual allowances - in what amounted to slush funds - and trusted to do the right thing.
There is no way of knowing whether they did.
The amount of money involved was, ultimately, small compared to the $222-million deficit the NDP government is trying to tame. But the public backlash has left politicians of all parties desperately trying to show they have turned the page on years of poor practices.
"What this budget does point out is that, because of the changes that we have made in going down to one of the most transparent systems in the country, we will realize a $1.3-million recovery," Premier Darrell Dexter said. "So, not only are we taking initiatives through every department, we're also taking measures on that front as well to demonstrate the need for restraint."
Transparency and restraint were not words with which, until recently, Nova Scotia politicians have had to be familiar. Freelance columnist and pundit Ralph Surette said that politicians had long benefited from a public that shrugged at elected officials enriching themselves in office. In one notorious case, Billy Joe MacLean was kicked out of the legislature in 1986 for filing forged expense claims. He was later re-elected to the legislature and has since served multiple terms as mayor of Port Hawkesbury.
"There's a tradition that politics are dirty in Nova Scotia, that's the way it's played, and it's only wrong if you get caught," Mr. Surette said. "In many ways there was a culture of corruption here."
Others argue that the dubious dealings exposed by the Auditor-General were simply the result of human frailty - that people without oversight will eventually act in ways that do not pass muster.
That will soon change. The majority NDP, which is approaching its first anniversary in office, last month introduced multiple changes to the compensation system.
"It's important to preserve our democracy, or respect for democracy, to move very quickly and decisively to show that things will change and the bad things that happened will never happen again," Mr. Steele said in an interview last week. "In hindsight, obviously, we all wish we'd moved further faster, but it took the Auditor-General's report to really get things moving."
Mr. Lapointe's work helped draw attention to the secretive and collusive expenses system. It was administered behind closed doors by the Internal Economy Board, whose minutes were not circulated. Most members of the board were from the government caucus, but it included opposition representatives as well. According to the clerk of the legislature, who sat in, all decisions were by consensus.
"In a small province like this, the legislature always has taken on the aura of a club," said David Johnson, professor of political science at Cape Breton University. "As the system of MLA expenses gets going they probably thought, 'Well, we're all honourable and no MLA is going to go out and spend the money on egregiously stupid things.' "
But with some of the allowances, there was no system in place to stop them from doing so.
Last year, politicians were given as much as $35,834 each for postage, travel and accommodations, without having to explain how the money was being used. Another allowance, pegged last year at $12,600, was vaguely described as being in lieu of "expenses incurred on account of services" to the constituency. There was no documentation needed for that money either.
"The rules were fuzzy," remembered Mark Parent, the Progressive Conservative former minister of the environment was lost his seat in the 2009 election. "Fuzzy rules lead to abuse, even for those trying to follow them, and allow massive abuse for those who want."
Even so, he was surprised at the amount of taxpayer-funded advertising and donations revealed by the auditor. "Giving away money comes perilously close to vote-buying," he said. "A lot of the advertising didn't have proper rules. It was advertising to get yourself re-elected."
Mr. Parent said that many of the practices seemed dubious even when he was in office. At one point, he said, he raised concerns in caucus about the wisdom of changing the housing allowance so as to no longer require receipts. He remembers being told that it was more convenient that way for bureaucrats to manage those expenses. And when he was first elected and tried to outfit his office with surplus government furniture, he was surprised to find that he was obliged to buy new and expense it.
"I was told you have to buy your stuff and that you will own what you buy," he said, marvelling years later about the bizarre policy. "If what you buy you own, that's certainly a temptation to buy more than what you need."
Mr. Parent said he did not want the furniture and ultimately sold it to his successor. He didn't feel right keeping the money and sent the government a cheque, asking that it be used for land conservation.
Other politicians who questioned the perks received a chilly reception.
While still in opposition, Mr. Steele, the current Finance Minister, had denounced compensation as "a model of secrecy and complexity." In a 2005 op-ed piece for The Halifax Chronicle Herald, he listed the various allowances MLAs could claim and suggested that these perks served as a politically palatable way to pump up salaries.
"There was no support from the other members of the House," he said recently, leading him to believe he would have no success if he continued to push the issue. "There was one member who told me in the parking lot one day that he agreed with what I was saying. I didn't actually appreciate that very much because what I needed was somebody to say out loud that they agreed with me. Instead I was painted as a maverick."
Members of the board that handled the expenses system appear to have ignored all warnings and continued to increase discretionary spending limits.
Last June, the NDP won a majority government on a platform of doing things differently. Some of the more egregious perks were ended by the autumn. Departing politicians would no longer be able to keep taxpayer-financed furniture. A generous severance package was axed. A technology fund that allowed MLAs to buy multiple cameras was scrapped.
But it took the Auditor-General's devastating report in February to persuade politicians to end the secrecy. Only then did the expenses committee allow the public to sit in on a meeting. Under the glare of media scrutiny, members passed a series of resolutions trimming the discretionary spending available to politicians and promising more transparency.
After a round of apologies and promises to do better, many politicians argue the issue is dead and encourage reporters to focus on other matters. But the public is not willing to let this go.
"I think the politicians don't understand how pissed off people are," said John Boileau, who wrote The Peaceful Revolution, a history of Nova Scotia politics. "It's quite understandable they want to move on. They are embarrassed. And well they should be."
But he also says that the outrage is positive evidence that voters' attitudes are changing. The public once accepted that people took advantage of being elected, he said. In the 1990s, Liberal premier John Savage faced a storm of criticism from within his own party when he tried to rein in the patronage system.
"It's the whole culture of 'I'm entitled to my entitlements,' " Mr. Boileau said.
But Jennifer Smith, a professor of political science at Dalhousie University, argues the current scandal is the simple result of human weakness combined with lax oversight.
"Members responded rationally. If they find out that others can have items A and B covered by expenses, then why wouldn't they? And it just starts to go on and on and on, year after year," she said.
"The problem is that people think the [politician]is going to run around with a moral Geiger counter in their head. But that's not how people behave. And that's why you need the rules."
Oliver Moore