“I want to thank the arts community in particular and everyone in general for their tremendous support during the Chronicle Herald newsroom strike,” popular and influential longtime arts journalist Elissa Barnard wrote on her Facebook page last week. “I have decided not to go back.” She was not alone. “After 29 years (or so), it’s...
The Liberals’ $24.5-million Acadia University funding fandango
While Nova Scotia’s other universities were busy slicing and dicing, Acadia was applying for — and routinely being granted — secret government bailouts for its financial woes. For five years! Why?
Back in the summer and early fall of 2014, I served on an inelegantly named “Faculty Working Group on the Future of the College” at King’s, the small liberal arts and journalism university where I’ve taught since before forever. Our working group was set up in response to a six-months-in-the-making report from a “Long Term...
Who’s going to fix our broken criminal justice system?
The panel’s perhaps self-evident but nonetheless shocking admission: there are only a “limited number of people” — almost all of them with “substantial social and financial resources” — who can hire lawyers who have the time and resources to represent them fully and adequately in the criminal justice system.
“The evidence has therefore made it clear to us that it can be unfair to expect that a brass knuckle possession, or breach of recognizance, or theft-under file for a repeat offender currently in custody being dealt with on a legal aid certificate will have the same level of file management and documentation as the...
The Lyle Howe case: guilty, but…
To its credit, the panel did not shy away from the implications of the fact the bar society was “seeking formal discipline against a member of the African Nova Scotian community.” But then what?
The CBC headline — “Halifax Lawyer Lyle Howe Found Guilty of Professional Misconduct, Incompetence” — was simple. And it is accurate. So far as it goes. But the actual 140-page decision by a bar society disciplinary panel… IN THE MATTER OF: The Legal Profession Act, S.N.S. 2004, c. 28 and the Regulations of the Nova...
The Chronicle Herald strike meets the “final option”
Part of me hopes Kaplan’s mediation can end the strike, but part of me would like to see the process proceed to a full-scale industrial inquiry. Now that could get interesting.
For the sake of the 53 reporters and editors still walking the picket line at the Halifax Chronicle Herald, part of me hopes super-mediator/arbitrator/industrial inquiry commissioner William Kaplan is able — through an initial stage of mediation next month — to find a quick resolution to their seemingly intractable, brutish, one-year-176-days-and-counting dispute with owners Mark...
Sears stiffs its employees while vulture capitalists profit
“Just six dollars,” the woman behind the counter said cheerfully. “Gotta love health benefits.” “Actually,” replied the man, “I’m losing mine.”
On Friday, I was mindlessly meandering the aisles of my local Superstore, foraging for food and filling time, when I chanced on a conversation at the pharmacy. A man was paying for a prescription. “Just six dollars,” the woman behind the counter said cheerfully. “Gotta love health benefits.” “Actually,” replied the man, “I’m losing mine.”...
Is it always a bad idea to get governments involved in journalism?
I hesitate to disagree with Tim Bousquet, the editor of The Halifax Examiner, my colleague and boss. But in this instance I do. Not completely, but significantly.
“It’s always a bad idea to get the government involved in journalism.” Tim Bousquet June 27, 2017 I hesitate to disagree with Tim Bousquet, the editor of The Halifax Examiner, my colleague and boss. But in this instance I do. Not completely, but significantly. Tim was writing last week about a proposal by a group...
Can a “white van driver” be a terrorist?
Three hours after the midnight attack, London police were still saying it was “too early” to declare the attack terrorism. It wasn’t until 8am that they finally acknowledged what seemed obvious to the rest of the world. Compare that to the London Bridge and Westminster attacks. They were both declared terrorist incidents within a few hours.
I was watching CNN last Sunday night. It is my guilty-pleasure punishment for the sin of obsessing too much about what Donald Trump might do next. Trump had filled up his Father’s Day dissing his predecessor, Barack Obama, in 140-character vitriol. He’d falsely claimed the latest public opinion poll showed his approval rating “higher than...
Stephen McNeil’s 20 per cent electoral victory: it was a referendum on…?
Nova Scotians, Stephen McNeil said, were “loud and clear they appreciated our handling of making sure we live within our means.” Reading the electoral tea leaves with all the self-serving wisdom of a Donald Trump tweet, McNeil added: “I believe the election was a referendum on that.” Oh dear…
So that didn’t take long. It will be three weeks tomorrow since Nova Scotians voted in a provincial general election. You may remember that election: the one in which Stephen McNeil’s Liberals came within a few hundred votes here or there of losing their majority status, the one in which more than six out of...
Wade Smith’s unfinished legacy: “It’s up to us…”
“For me to sit here and tell you why we need [an Africentric school] is for you to explain to me why we don't need it... I don’t understand why I’d have to explain to you why the enhancement of culture in the educational setting would be good. It’s about improvement, growth, it’s about self-esteem, all the things I thought education was about, for me personally.”
“Maybe we need to look at an all-black school or other alternatives.” It was April 2006 and Wade Smith, then the vice principal of St. Patrick’s High School in Halifax, was musing to former-student-become-CBC-journalist Maggie Rahr about a recently released report on the province’s progress — or lack thereof — in implementing the recommendations of...
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