In lawyer terms, it probably made sense. Scrounge in the legal underbrush for a technicality, a loophole to crawl through to derail potential litigation against your client. Save your client some unwanted publicity, maybe even a little — or a big — cash settlement. All good, all standard-issue Litigation 101. Unless, of course, your client...
Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Your tax dollars at work covering government butt
As Justice David Farrar summed up the appeal court ruling in the Alex Cameron case: “It would be manifestly unfair to allow the province to hide behind solicitor-client privilege while at the same time impugning the conduct of its solicitor.” But that didn't stop the McNeil government from trying. And trying.
Last week, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal instructed the McNeil government to stop hiding behind the skirts of solicitor-client privilege in order to hobble a lawsuit brought against it by a former government lawyer who claims the government impugned his conduct and attacked his character and reputation. Alex Cameron, a 26-year veteran of the...
“This is North Preston”: a story that “needs to be heard”
"This is North Preston" is a film about the stereotype of North Preston that allows the young men who’ve been stereotyped for so long to speak for themselves.
Jaren Hayman is from Toronto. He’s 32 years old, a white man. He began his professional career as a drummer, touring North America, but eventually morphed into a self-taught filmmaker. His first feature documentary, 2016’s Bodyguards: Secret Lives from the Watchtower, hit number one on the iTunes charts and earned a worldwide audience on Netflix. […]
A tale of two protests
While officials moved quickly to respond to student protests about the cancellation of high school rugby, they were quick to erect roadblocks when students wanted to protest climate change.
“In my view, kids should be in class.” Premier Stephen McNeil March 2019 “Something is happening here But you don’t know what it is, Do you, Mr. Jones?” Ballad of a Thin Man Bob Dylan (1965) One Friday. Two student protests. Two very different (immediate) results. On Friday at noon — less than 24 hours...
Health care crisis? What health care crisis?
Listen to Premier McNeil and Health Minister Delorey and you might imagine Inez Rudderham’s problems are specific and anomalous. Fix them and we fix the problem. The problem is McNeil and Delorey are the problem.
“To the premier of Nova Scotia, I dare you to take a meeting with me, and explain to me, and look into my eyes, and tell me that there is no health-care crisis in my province of Nova Scotia.” Inez Rudderham It was probably too much to expect Premier Stephen McNeil to respond in any...
Street checks: Who’s sorry now? Not the premier, not the justice minister, not the police
No one in authority seems willing to apologize for the decades of "disproportionate and negative" impact street checks have had on Nova Scotia's black community. Worse, no one seems to be committed to finally ending them once and for all.
Our question for today: why is it so hard for the people in charge of policing in Nova Scotia to say, I’m sorry? Last week… nearly three weeks after a damning 180-page report by an independent outside consultant confirmed that black males are nine times more likely than whites to be stopped in “random” police...
Verdict without end
More than 20 years after former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan was acquitted of sexually assaulting multiple women, other women are still coming forward with still more stories of what he did to them, still needing finally "to be heard." Including "Catherine."
I shouldn’t be surprised. Not after Me-too. But I am. Still. It happens more often than you might suppose. I’ll be attending a public event, and someone will come up to me. “Aren’t you the guy who wrote that book, the one about…?” Yes, I am, but it was published 20 years ago. “My sister…...
Wilson-Raybould, Churchill? Evidence our legislative committee systems don’t work
The committees don't work, of course, because of the people in charge. But the system itself makes that failure possible, even inevitable.
Quick now, what does Judy Wilson-Raybould v Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts, Michael Wernick et al have in common with Zach Churchill v Tim Houston, Ramona Jennex, Denise Peterson-Rafuse et al? Well yes, of course, both feature all-powerful political bosses — Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of SNC-Lavalin infame and Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil of the Yarmouth ferry...
Stunting 101: The games Bay Ferries plays
Bay Ferries says its Yarmouth ferry service's real problem has nothing to do with the government's over-subsidization or its own over-pricing. Blame it on the "nasty" opposition.
Mark MacDonald knows which donkey to pin the blame on for the fact his Bay Ferries Ltd.’s money-sinking pot of a Yarmouth-Maine ferry service isn’t winning the accolades he believes it deserves from Nova Scotia taxpayers. Forget the $61,187,310 in previously announced subsidies, grants and other goodies those same taxpayers have shovelled into the service...
Back to the drawing board, Bill
Finance Minister Bill Morneau says his budget will provide support for journalism. It won't. It will only provide demise-delaying bailouts for badly managed media corporations. There are better ways.
Start with this from Page 173 of the federal budget Finance Minister Bill Morneau tabled in the House of Commons last week: “Support for Journalism.” No one — certainly not I — would argue “a strong and independent news media” isn’t “crucial to a well-functioning democracy,” or that the news media doesn’t play a “vitally important...
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