Really? Of course, really. Last Wednesday, five Liberal MLAs — Gordon Wilson, Suzanne Lohnes-Croft, Ben Jessome, Brendan Maguire, and Hugh MacKay — voted, not with their minds, or their hearts, or their common sense, or even in the interests of the taxpayers who put them there, but in the craven service of their self-interested my-way-or-no-way...
Progress isn’t easy. Sometimes it just isn’t.
You know the way progress traditionally happens in politics: slowly, incrementally. And then you wake up one morning to the latest news from the Ontario provincial election campaign trail... or the White House. Progress, as Barack Obama once said, may not always be a straight line or a smooth path. But is there still a line? A path?
“We need to go forward, but progress isn’t always a straight line or a smooth path.” Barack Obama victory speech, November 7, 2012 How to explain our current political whipsaw? You go to sleep one night knowing 6,000 delegates to this weekend’s federal Liberal party convention will debate progressive resolutions to de-criminalize possession of small...
United Way poverty report: “the system needs to change”
The irony, the report points out, is that most of those who live in poverty are actually employed, but 28 per cent earn well below a living wage. Their poverty — are you listening, Mr. Premier? — costs the province $1.5–2.2-billion a year.
Halifax’s United Way has done it again. Traditionally, the do-good organization has been best known for turning your $5.4 million in yearly giving into a gamut of good grants to an alphabet soup of good-doing local organizations — from the Adsum Association for Women & Children to the Youth Voices of Nova Scotia Society —...
The judge and the complaints: finding the balance between judicial independence and public confidence
As the review committee’s decision demonstrates, we need to know more than can be communicated in a 140-character tweet before leaping off the ledge to firing-offence conclusions. The problem, too often, is that’s all reasonably informed people have to go on.
“In the Matter of Complaints Against Judge Gregory Lenehan, made pursuant to the Provincial Court Act, R.S.N.S. 1989, c. 238 …” If nothing else, last week’s decision by the review committee looking into allegations of “misogynistic reasoning” and “gender bias” by Nova Scotia Provincial Court Justice Gregory Lenehan inadvertently made a compelling argument for cameras...
Peter Munk, Clairtone, and the Nova Scotia disconnection
“Everything I’ve been able to achieve," Peter Munk once said, "is because of Clairtone." So why did his benevolence bypass us?
When Peter Munk died last week at the age of 90, the paeans of praise from the national media were so effusive as to seem over the top. The Globe and Mail’s 3,300-word tribute appeared under the gushing headline: “The Extraordinary Life of a Business Legend, Philanthropist and National Champion.” In The Financial Post, he was...
City council, the developer, and the deal that isn’t quite
APL promises 10 affordable housing units in exchange for being allowed to add five storeys to its Willow Tree project. Who benefits? Hint: not the city...
Halifax City Council can be — even at its best of times — confusing, contradictory, confounding. Last week, council was not, even by its own modest standards, at its best. Councillors were considering again/still/always a proposal from APL, an Armoyan development company, to erect a commercial-residential tower at the corner of Robie Street and Quinpool...
Stephen McNeil, the offshore windfall, and the royal ‘we’
Last week’s seemingly out-of-the-blue government announcements re: the offshore windfall and the bottomless ferry pit share the same dated father-knows-best worldview of political decision-making in which we, the voters, get to cast our ballots for a myriad of unconnected, disconnected reasons once every four years and then shut up for the next four while the government claims to act in our name.
Stephen McNeil says “we” — and by we the premier certainly doesn’t mean thee or me — “had a healthy discussion” about how to spend a could-be $250-million windfall to the Nova Scotia treasury, thanks to a one-time recalculation of offshore royalties, thanks to a one-time arbitration decision that happened to fall in our favour....
When ‘freedom of speech’ is a code, not a value
Making free speech the raw-meat main dish for the Conservative party’s right-wing base worked well enough for current federal leader Andrew Scheer. Will it do the same for wannabe Nova Scotia Tory leader John Lohr?
What is it about Tories seeking their party’s leadership and their seemingly painful need to gymnast-twist the once liberal value of freedom of speech for their own illiberal purposes? Last spring when he was running to become federal Conservative Party leader, Andrew Scheer threatened to cut off federal funding to any university that didn’t foster...
The Horne case: mumble-mouthed nothings from mealy-mouthed nobodies
Neither Capital Health nor the Nova Scotia Health Authority has ever publicly apologized to Horne for years of bullying and harassment, while successive provincial governments chose to look the other way, giving carte blanche to the health authority to hire hugely expensive, by-the-hour outside lawyers to bully Horne for more than a decade. And so it goes...
If you read only last week’s headlines — Appeal Court Slashes Damages Payout to Cardiologist Gabrielle Horne (Chronicle Herald); Halifax Cardiologist Sees Reduced Damages of $800K in Suit Against Health Authority: Nova Scotia Court of Appeal Rejects Appeal by Dr. Gabrielle Horne to also Sue for Breach of Contract (cbc.ca) — you might assume world...
Memo to Stephen McNeil: beware teachers bearing frustrations
On October 25, 2016, 96 per cent of teachers gave their union an overwhelming strike mandate. And that changed everything about everything in the McNeil government’s union-busting calculus.
Cast your mind back to October 25, 2016. The date will be significant. Before that day, Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government seemed to be in full control of its anti-public-sector-worker agenda. The executive of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union was preparing — reluctantly — to recommend its 7,600 members agree to a tentative...
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 11
- Next Page »