The ever-expanding, ongoing plan to drag Nova Scotia’s healthcare infrastructure into the 21st century — by tearing down and replacing three well-past-their-best-before-date buildings in the QEII hospital complex, expanding the Dartmouth General Hospital and constructing new outpatient clinics in the Bayers Lake business park and on the site of the former CBC building on Bell...
Trying to get straight answers from the provincial government is an exercise in frustration and futility
Morning File, Thursday, October 4, 2018
Joan Baxter here again, filling in for Tim who is in Toronto for Wrongful Conviction Day, and being recognized by Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, advocating for, and exonerating individuals convicted of a crime that they did not commit. He is being awarded the the Tracey Tyler Award for his reporting on the […]
Don’t tax the rich: They won’t pay
How is it possible our formerly best-to-do taxpayers, who paid $33.1-billion into federal coffers in 2015 could only pony up a paltry-by-comparison $26.3-billion in 2016? What really happened? We thought you’d never ask. And what will happen as a result? Don’t ask.
Did you know Canadian taxpayers earning more than $250,000 annually — them’s the “one per cent” to me and thee — paid $6.8-billion less in federal taxes in 2016 than they did in 2015? But… uh… wait a minute. Didn’t Canada’s shiny new Liberal government create a whole new bracket in its first 2016 federal […]
Stephen McNeil: Read his lips. Just don’t believe a word he says
Here in Stephen McNeil’s Nova Scotia, we should mark Right to Know Week by lowering the flag to half-mast and lighting a mourning candle in honour of the quaint notion citizens have some fundamental right to know what its government is doing.
Happy “Right to Know Week!” It starts today in case you hadn’t noticed. Why would you? And, oh yes, in case you’re counting, this Friday, Sept. 28, will mark the 16th annual “International Right to Know Day,” a day set aside in 40 countries around the world, including Canada, “to raise global awareness of individuals’...
Africville in Black and White: “hybrid performative piece” about Africville premieres tonight
I was heartened to spend time this summer with Black scholar Chana Kai Lee who arrived in Halifax to conduct research on, among other topics, Africville. Now home, the associate professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Georgia recalled her experience at the Africville Museum. “My visit affirmed my appreciation for […]
Rick Mehta: Acadia clarifies, commingles, confuses
The Mehta case isn't about free speech. And it's not the exercise of academic freedom. It is a professor in a position of power publicly bullying his own students for his amusement and the adulation of his followers. Reason enough to fire him. But...
Start with this. I am no longer conflicted about Acadia University’s decision to fire psychology professor Rick Mehta. The university had plenty of good reasons to dismiss him. On the other hand, I am still troubled by Acadia’s willingness to stir its own self-interest — “damaging the reputation of the institution” and the implicit notion...
Rick Mehta: a firing offence or just offensive?
Last winter, Acadia University said it was investigating Mehta “for the manner in which you are expressing views that you are alleged to be advancing or supporting and, in some instances, time that you are spending on these issues in the classroom.” We need to parse that sentence. It appears the university says it was investigating Mehta, both for his personal views (freedom of speech) and also for what he was saying in his classroom. Did that violate his academic freedom?
I will confess I’m conflicted about the news Acadia University has fired Rick Mehta. On Friday, the university confirmed it had terminated the controversial psychology professor, effective August 31, but then refused to say why or “provide any elaboration” about what it called “a personnel matter.” Acadia also wouldn’t release the results of an investigation...
Christopher Garnier’s PTSD: right policy, wrong result, better outcome…
We may not like Veterans Affairs' decision to fund Christopher Garnier's PTSD treatment, but it is the right policy. And the publicity about Garnier's case may lead to better outcomes for other veterans' families.
Sometimes a right policy results in a wrong result. Most of the time — including in the case of convicted murderer/diagnosed PTSD sufferer Christopher Garnier — we are better off focusing on the right policy rather than on the occasional unexpected, unhappy wrong result of that policy. When I was a young freelance journalist, I...
The future of Halifax Transit: Giant tickets soon, and better fare systems down the road
How we pay for transit could dramatically change in as little as 18 months
Halifax Transit made a splash recently with the announcement that in a few months, it will be introducing enormous paper tickets to replace the current small square ones. Twitter users did not disappoint in poking fun at the new out-sized discount fare medium: A series of diagrams to illustrate the size of the new Halifax...
Is Tory leader wannabe John Lohr a Maxime Bernier in waiting?
Andrew Scheer’s federal Tories seem to be in full split-apart mode. The provincial Progressive Conservatives? Much will depend on their upcoming leadership convention.
Will Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives pull a federal Conservative Party and stagger out of their October 27 leadership convention hopelessly divided between their regular right-wing whingers and their ultra-right-wing whiners? Could PC leadership hopeful John Lohr — he of the Northern-Pulp-protesters-were-paid, free-speech-for-fanatics, let’s-build-more-statues-to-Edward-Cornwallis, frack-yes(!) wing of the party — emerge as the leader of a...
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