It was a tweet from Whole Women’s Health Texas clinic that got me. As abortion care providers we can be a bit hardened, but I was teary: The clinic staff were working until 11:59pm on August 31, 2021, the waiting room still full, trying to get everyone cared for before midnight, when Senate Bill 8 […]
When developers and landlords speak, Tim Houston listens
Consider: "I have calls from people who have lost their rental [investments] because of rent control...” And “what does [rent control] do to those that were thinking about building?” Do you hear the voices of tenants or the homeless or those being priced out of their accommodations in those comments? Didn't think so...
The Examiner asked [Premier-Designate Tim] Houston the following question: As a prominent developer of major commercial and residential buildings, [Scott] McCrea’s Armour Group stands to benefit from PC government decisions around business, taxation, and housing. Does the Premier-designate acknowledge there may be the potential for conflict of interest in allowing Mr. McCrea to influence decisions […]
‘Houston, we have…’
A recap of the good, the bad, and the random from last week’s Nova Scotia provincial election.
One down, and one more we-interrupt-your-summer-to-bring-you-this-election-campaign to get through. Perhaps it’s time for a quick recap of the good, the bad and the random from last week’s Nova Scotia provincial election. First the bad news. Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives will form a majority government. I say that in the most non-partisan way I can muster....
The candidates’ debate, take two
There must be a better way, and not just to conduct candidates' debates. How would you change how elections are conducted?
Last week’s skeptical — some might call it cynical — column about the provincial election leaders’ debate prompted a number of more thoughtful-than-I-deserved responses. Richard Starr, for example, agreed with my point there were “ideas buried in the [leaders’] talking points that are worthy of debate.” But, he continued… I assume you mean informed debate […]
Going to the candidates’ debate
The Nova Scotia leaders' debate was debate as spectacle instead of substance. But even the spectacle wasn't very spectacular.
Laugh about it, shout about it When you’ve got to choose Every way you look at this you lose. — With thanks and apologies to Paul Simon If elections are no time to discuss important issues, then leaders’ debates are no place to reach meaningful conclusions about political leadership. Which is why, on the...
Sunday is Emancipation Day; I’ll be celebrating with Corey Wright’s watermelon mango ale and pointing to freedom
Juneteenth. Emancipation Day. Standouts among the works that chronicle efforts to commemorate the official end of slavery in the United States and throughout the British empire include On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed and Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada by Natasha Henry. “Very few Canadians are aware that at one time their nation’s economy was […]
The premier who won’t get involved versus the sister who won’t give up
I can understand why Nicole Gnazdowsky might have become a “hostile individual” after no one in authority would tell her how and why her brother died in a workplace incident. I can’t understand why Premier Iain Rankin can claim he doesn’t have the authority to act in her case because there’s an election campaign underway. Really?
I can understand why Nicole Gnazdowsky might have become a “hostile individual.” I can’t understand why Premier Iain Rankin can claim — as he did last week — that he doesn’t have the authority to act in her case because there’s an election campaign underway. Huh? Let’s start with Gnazdowsky. Her 26-year-old “little brother,” Andrew,...
Iain Rankin scores unforced error after own goal after…
I’m guessing — hoping, for their sakes — the premier's inner circle wasn’t responsible for "strategically leaking" news about Rankin's youthful DUIs last week. But they, and Rankin himself, are certainly culpable for what happened after that.
Watching Premier Iain Rankin score one own goal after another — and then, oh god, no, yet another — on his Liberal campaign last week was fascinating in a rubberneck, train wreck, don’t look now, not again, JUST PLEASE STOP IT kind of way. By itself, Rankin’s unforced gaffes probably won’t — and shouldn’t —...
Hey, Mr. Politician: What’s your plan to fix Nova Scotia’s broken child protection system?
Until an unexpected email forced me to reconsider last November, I hadn’t taken the time to connect all the dots from the individual stories I’d written to the larger picture of the child welfare system they painted. I had no idea Nova Scotia’s Children and Family Services Act had been significantly amended in 2015. Or any clue many inside and outside the system believed life for children and families was now worse even than the cases I’d written about so randomly over the years.
The backstory to my series on Nova Scotia’s child welfare system in last week’s Examiner — “Child Protection: Catch-22 All Over Again. Again and Again…” Part 1 and Part 2 — had its beginnings in a mid-November 2020 email that landed, unbidden, in my website’s inbox. “I am very concerned about the family court system […]
Promises to make… Promises to keep?
Iain Rankin billed himself as the candidate of generational change. But as a premier in pre-election pretend mode, he seems more like the unwelcome but familiar ghost of politicians past.
On June 14, 2021, Health Minister Zach Churchill announced the “Rankin government” — as it demands to be known — will invest one million dollars a year to provide improved cancer care treatment and support for patients in southwestern Nova Scotia. “We are committed to giving the people of Digby, Shelburne and Yarmouth counties better...
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