“I think you know every Canadian knows you’re guilty. And you can take that to your grave!” Court spectator Mark Iich Shouted at Gerald Regan following his acquittal December 1998 As the author of “that book about”… I spent much of last week being interviewed by journalists, all of whom — like me — were...
NOT GUILTY: The missing Gerald Regan Chapters, Part 2
Gerald Regan, who died Monday at 91, was a prominent 20th-century Canadian politician, a federal Liberal cabinet minister and two-term premier of Nova Scotia. He was also a serial sexual abuser of young women who spent much of the 1990s fighting off criminal allegations involving more than three dozen women whose complaints stretched over four decades. Halifax journalist Stephen Kimber wrote the 1999 book, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan. Because Regan had been found not guilty, however, his publisher decided to excise two chapters from the original manuscript. Here is the second of those two chapters.
It remains one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries of the Gerald Regan era. Who stole the tape recording of the interview with the page girl — and why? That story began in the late winter of 1977 following a night sitting of the Nova Scotia legislature. Jennifer Oulton,[1] an 18-year-old legislative page who’d […]
NOT GUILTY: The missing Gerald Regan Chapters, Part 1
Gerald Regan, who died Monday at 91, was a prominent 20th-century Canadian politician, a federal Liberal cabinet minister and two-term premier of Nova Scotia. He was also a serial sexual abuser of young women who spent much of the 1990s fighting off criminal allegations involving more than three dozen women whose complaints stretched over four decades. Halifax journalist Stephen Kimber wrote the 1999 book, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan. Because Regan had been found not guilty, however, his publisher decided to excise two chapters from the original manuscript. Here is the first of those two chapters.
Before there was Jian Ghomeshi, or Bill Cosby, or Donald Trump, there was Gerald Regan. On March 15, 1995, the RCMP charged Nova Scotia’s 19th premier with what would eventually become more than 30 counts of sexual misconduct, including rape, involving nearly three dozen women over a 40-year period, dating from his days as a […]
Doctors’ deal within government’s public sector wage guidelines? Not really
When the government announces its new contract with the province's physicians, expect it to claim the deal fits within the guidelines it intends to impose on less powerful, more vulnerable public sector workers. It isn't. Not even close. But that's the McNeil smoke and mirrors.
We won’t know for certain until Wednesday (Nov. 27) whether Nova Scotia’s 3,100 doctors have agreed to a new four-year contract with the provincial government. But we can guess. And that guess would be yes. Doctors Nova Scotia has been officially lips-zipped silent about the terms of the deal during the past month while its...
Physician assistants? It shouldn’t be that hard. Really
The province has announced a pilot program to see if it's safe to let physician assistants into our health care system. They already operate legally in much of the US, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick and in the Canadian military. So why just a modest pilot project? We're glad you asked.
A September announcement that the province’s health department plans to launch a new pilot project to road-test the use of physician assistants had somehow passed over — or under — my Spidey-sense news radar until it popped up again, almost incidentally, near the end of a news report Friday. The Friday story focused on new...
Waiting for Fitch: the much-delayed consultant’s report you may never get to see in full
Bob Dylan didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And Nova Scotians don't need a consultant to tell us our Emergency Health Services are a mess. Do we really even need one to tell us how to fix it?
“Last week the government issued a tender for a system-design review of Emergency Health Services. The minister said after 25 years in its current form he thought it was time for a review to ensure the system continues to follow best practices…” CBC News Aug 8, 2018 “Helping improve emergency services for over three decades....
Whose deaths matter?
The Nova Scotia government has brought in legislation to create expert review panels to look into the deaths of those who die as a result of domestic violence as well as children who die in provincial care. The goal is to "turn tragedy into lessons learned and lives saved into the future." But Justice Minister Mark Furey refuses to extend the new law to include another vulnerable group: adults who die in provincial custody. Why not?
Why do the Liberals continue to get it so wrong even when they seem to be trying to get it right? Early last month, for example, Justice Minister Mark Furey introduced legislation to have expert review committees examine deaths resulting from domestic violence as well as unexpected deaths involving children in the care of the...
Stephen McNeil and the Crowns: Magic realism meets reality
After a crazy week of blind-siding legislation, insults, distortions, bluster, meaningless committee hearings and more fact-free moments than you'd find in a Trumpian White House, the province and its Crown attorneys are right back where they began — at the bargaining table. Well, not exactly as illustrated...
So let us review. On Mar. 31, 2019, the collective agreement between Crown prosecutors and the Nova Scotia government expired. As part of the previous contract, signed in June 2016, the prosecutors had agreed to accept a draconian wage package the government was imposing on all other public servants. At the same time, however, the...
Stephen McNeil’s Collective Bargaining Game
The thing about this game — as the government demonstrated last week when it changed the law to take away Crown prosecutors' collective bargaining rights — is that McNeil always wins. That's the way the game works. Always.
Let’s play a game. A shell game. You say it’s not a game to you. I say it’s always a game, and I always win. That’s the game. You say no one told you we were even playing. That’s part of the game too. I get to decide when it’s game on. So take that...
The curtain falls on this year’s ferry follies… but there’s always next year
Transportation Minister Lloyd Hines had to sort-of admit his ferry universe hadn’t unfolded exactly as planned, or… well, at all. “We're really disappointed on behalf of the operators that we haven't been able to mount a season…” On behalf of the operators?! The operators are making out like bandits. What about the rest of us?
So it’s finally, Thanksgiving-ly, over. For now. We hope. But don’t hold your breath. And do hold on to your wallet. Tightly. “There will not be any commercial crossings in 2019,” Mark MacDonald, the CEO of Bay Ferries, emailed a CBC reporter Friday in response to his question about whether the Yarmouth-Bar Harbor ferry would...
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