“Professor Kimble’s comments seem to reinforce the recent CBC Marketplace show on fake credentials,” Gerry Anderson wrote on LinkedIn. He was among the unhappier readers responding to my recent column about the federal government’s modest tax reform proposals. “His comments show that he has not done any research nor has any real-world experience.” Similarly, Robert...
Nova Scotia’s cap-and-trade system to go easy on big corporate polluters
Legislation introduced by the McNeil government to enable setting up a cap-and-trade system to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions as part of a Trudeau directive to slow climate change was debated briefly in the Legislature this week. What is missing from Bill 15 — “An Act to Amend Chapter 1 of the Acts of 1994-95,...
The Burnside Expressway was realigned and it’s going to cost commuters lots of time, money, and pollution
The route of the highway was moved south of Anderson Lake because Dexter Construction was "not expected to be cooperative."
Just before the last provincial election, the Nova Scotia Liberals announced a seven-year, $390 million commitment to highway building and twinning. It was a distinct change from the stance they had taken the previous year during tolling consultations, when they made clear that Nova Scotia could not afford to twin highways without collecting tolls. One...
Reparations raises the racism disconnect
"I wasn’t around when slavery existed and I’m not responsible for it, so why should I have to pay reparations? The past is past, things are better now, so let’s just move on…" It’s a comforting argument, but it pre-supposes we, as whites, haven’t benefited from centuries of slavery and racism, or that our black fellow citizens aren’t still suffering its after-effects. It also assumes the economic, educational, judicial, and social scales are now in perfect colour-blind balance. Neither notion is correct.
On Sept. 25, the United Nations Human Rights Council discussed a report on Canada by its Working Group of Experts on Peoples of African Descent. The report, which shone its white-hot light on our country’s sordid history of slavery and racism in virtually every sphere of life — from education to justice to the environment...
Halifax Transit rolls out designs for Transit Priority Lanes on Bayers Road and Gottingen Street
The latest Halifax Transit quarterly report came to council’s transportation committee last week, and as you may have read in Friday’s Morning File, the news wasn’t great. The stats show a continued decline in ridership numbers: a two per cent drop for April to June 2017 as compared to 2016. The drop, at least, is...
NDP re-introduces same tire-burning ban bill introduced — and passed — by the Liberals in 2008
Talk about déjà vu. NDP Environment critic Lenore Zann has resurrected a bill that Liberal MLA Keith Colwell introduced 10 years ago to ban tire-burning in Nova Scotia. All three political parties passed it in 2008 but the law was never proclaimed. Don’t expect the Liberals to pass a carbon copy of their previous bill...
Beware businesses bearing bleats
There is no doubt the Liberal tax reform proposals are only a baby step in the right direction — and there are lots of other ripe targets for reform — but we need to begin somewhere.
What should you think when you suddenly find yourself squarely in the firing-squad crosshairs of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Medical Association, Doctors Nova Scotia, the Canadian Bar Association, the business-boosting press, retailers, restaurateurs, tax planners, even ad hockeries like the newly minted Nova Scotia Coalition for...
Here’s what we need for a great new Mumford Terminal
The city must first make big decisions on commuter rail and transit lanes in order to get the bus terminal right.
It’s finally happening. The city has started planning its redo of the ghastly, despised Mumford Terminal. The city has hired Dillon Consulting for phase one: figuring out where the heck to put the thing, designing how it will work, and giving a rough guess at how much it will cost to build. Dillon needs to...
What’s going on with LED Roadway Lighting?
The company has received at least $22 million in public money, but no one will tell the public what the status of the company is.
Sometimes, chasing a story that runs into a brick wall can be revealing. Two weeks ago, I decided to do an update on LED Roadway Lighting, the Nova Scotian company completing the changeover of the Halifax Regional Municipality’s 37,000 street lights into fixtures that consume sixty per cent less energy and are supposed to deliver...
Stephen McNeil could learn a thing or two from Fidel Castro
How is it that Cuba, which is such a poor country, can afford such a comprehensive health care system and so many Nova Scotians don't have a family doctor? We're glad you asked.
My wife and I recently spent a week in Washington, D.C., advocating for an end to the failed, 56-years-and-counting U.S. blockade of Cuba. We were with a group that included American, Canadian, and European activists, a renowned Cuban pediatric oncologist, a North American representative of Cuba’s main people-to-people friendship organization, the head of a Cuban...
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 38
- Next Page »