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You are here: Home / Featured / Shawn Cleary’s betrayal of voters

Shawn Cleary’s betrayal of voters

Morning File, Wednesday, June 27, 2018

June 27, 2018 By Tim Bousquet 21 Comments

News

1. Shawn Cleary

Shawn Cleary

I’m taking a mapping class at the Journalism school this week. It’s pretty cool!

I’ve always wanted to get into mapping beyond simply using Google Maps, and in recent years new software programs have become available that allow people without extensive tech backgrounds to manipulate GIS databases and make maps. About a year ago, I started playing around with a program called Mapbox, but I found I didn’t have the time to dedicate to learning it to the degree necessary to use it for practical purposes.

So when J-school instructor Fred Vallance-Jones contacted me to say he still had space in this summer’s mapping class, I jumped at the opportunity to join. I believe in professional development in all fields, and here was something exactly tailored to my interests. We’re learning a program called ArcGIS, and already I’m seeing potential uses for it beyond simply mapping: it will allow me to do data analysis on a scale I hadn’t previously thought possible for a small operation like the Examiner.

Anyway, the class is all-day, all-week, which meant I had to plan my time carefully. I decided to get guest writers for most of this week’s Morning Files — Erica Butler wrote yesterday’s, and we have two other writers for Thursday and Friday. I thought for Wednesday, I’d just bang out a short File. Monday’s File I could do over the weekend — there’s usually not much news on Monday mornings, and I could link to other articles the Examiner has published, like Stephen Kimber’s weekly column, which we usually publish on Sundays. It’s summer, my readers are forgiving, all good.

I tell you this to say I haven’t really been paying attention to much besides my class. But yesterday morning I had a few minutes to spare as I ate my granola and downed a quick cup of coffee before catching the bus, so I popped onto Twitter to see what was going on. I joined an exchange between Councillor Shawn Cleary and someone else, to ask the honest question about what Cleary thought of a city hall lobbyist registry. But then — bang! — Cleary started attacking me, weirdly, for not having a Journalism degree:

Huh? Why in response to asking an honest question about a lobbyist registry was Cleary attacking me for not having a Journalism degree?

Well, I soon figured out that Cleary was angry about Stephen Kimber’s last column, which I linked to Monday. Understand that Kimber is a long-time reporter and not just a Journalism school graduate but also a Journalism school instructor.

So attacking me for not having a degree because of something Kimber wrote makes no sense at all. I suppose you could blame me for publishing Kimber, but even then the “no degree!” complaint doesn’t hold up. My best guess is that Cleary somehow thought I wrote the column.

This see-through building has been approved for the Willow Tree intersection. If after construction the building isn’t actually see-through, we should sue for false advertising.

As for Kimber’s column, it’s a balanced and fair piece about Cleary and Cleary’s vote in favour of Armco’s development at the Willow Tree intersection at the corner of Quinpool Road and Robie Street. My deal with Kimber is that his columns are behind the paywall for a week before we make them public, but in the interest of clarity, I’m making Kimber’s column public today. You can read the column, “The contradictions of being Shawn Cleary,” here.

But since somehow I’ve been dragged into this, I’ll express my own thoughts on the matter.

Candidate Shawn Cleary stated his position on the Armco proposal before the 2016 elections. His lengthy post about it seems to have been taken off his website, but thanks to the miracle of the internet archive, we can still read it:

Yesterday, Halifax Council voted 11-4 to reject the recommendation of Halifax planners to give Armco a height limit of 20 stories at the corner of Quinpool and Robie, and instead gave the developer 29 stories.  

There are at least five problems with this vote.

First, Halifax has voted against a reasonable balance. From a purely public-interest point of view, there is benefit in having a tall building on Quinpool — which could use the new local customers — and Robie — which is a major transit corridor. But, a tall building there casts a long shadow into the Halifax Commons, one of our best-used public spaces. As a winter city, we must maximize the sunlight in our public spaces and should not give that light away lightly. A height limit of 20 stories would have struck a much more reasonable balance.

Second, Council is doing a bad job negotiating on behalf of the public. Once the Centre Plan is complete, we will be able to use Bonus Zoning to extract money for every square foot of new height to be used to nearby public amenities. In other words, we will be able to say, “In exchange for the public letting you earn more, you need to give the public something in return.”

As it stands, Council voted to give Armco millions of dollars in extra development rights without securing a piece of that benefit for those who have to live with the wind and shadow. For those who believe the 29 story proposal was a negotiating tactic and that the developer expected to receive less, Council’s acceptance of the absolute highest number is particularly frustrating. The fact that most Councillors who voted to make this extra contribution of building rights receive electoral donations themselves from developers does not smell good. Many Haligonians perceive this to be a conflict of interest.

Third, Council has exculpated bullying as a tactic. Armco initially proposed a building height of 22 stories back in 2014. When staff suggested it was too high, the developer came back with 28 stories. For Council to say “Sure” is an insult to public process. As Councillor Watts said at the time, “It’s unusual, to have concerns listed … and have a proposal come back that does not address those concerns. I’ve not seen that before.” So how does Council respond? By giving them a yes anyways.

Fourth, we only get so much growth per year, and we are better off to distribute that growth amongst many developments, large and small, rather than to concentrate it all in just a few towers. Our growth rate in the Regional Centre is higher now than it has been in years because more people want to live in the core, which is fantastic, but our growth rate is not yet at New York or Calgary levels. Some tall buildings may be necessary and in some locations, a 29 story building may be appropriate, but we are not so desperate that we need to let them cast shadows over our major parks.

Fifth, this decision undermines public confidence in planning. As with the Wellington decision, local residents, the local Councillor, city staff, and the planning advisory committee were all against the proposed height, but Council voted to pass it anyway. City staff are telling residents that under the Centre Plan, height limits will be respected. The more that Council disregards planning staff’s recommendations, the harder that is to believe. We don’t want to lose that public trust.

Clearly, this building will not destroy Halifax, and other elements of the development, such as the first few floors, are well-designed. But the building’s height fails to strike the right balance for the public. If we continue to make decisions with such disregard for process and local concern, we will only stoke an antagonistic relationship between the public and developers. With good process, clear rules, and consistent decision-making — in a system where developers can make solid returns and the public can be happy with outcomes — we would all be better off.

Frankly, we need some new Councillors. I am accepting no donations from developers this election in an attempt to restore public confidence. If you think that’s a good idea, I hope you will support my campaign. This is ridiculous and needs to stop.

These were words of wisdom! Cleary sensibly and clearly supported a reasonable-but-not-excessive level of density and height — 20 storeys max — for the Armco site, defended the professionalism of city planning staff, and argued that very tall buildings might be appropriate elsewhere on the peninsula but not at this site.

Importantly, Cleary also underscored the importance of local control. Let’s read that part again:

[T]his decision undermines public confidence in planning. As with the Wellington decision, local residents, the local Councillor, city staff, and the planning advisory committee were all against the proposed height, but Council voted to pass it anyway. City staff are telling residents that under the Centre Plan, height limits will be respected. The more that Council disregards planning staff’s recommendations, the harder that is to believe. We don’t want to lose that public trust.

When the Armco proposal came to a vote before council two weeks ago, the local councillor — Lindell Smith — voted against it. So did the councillor whose district is across the street, Waye Mason. Planning staff also was opposed to the development. But now-Councillor Shawn Cleary not only voted in favour of the proposal, completely upturning his 2016 position, but also led the charge for it, bizarrely calculating millions of dollars in supposed “benefit” on the fly, seemingly on the back of a napkin — a calculation Cleary’s fellow councillor, Sam Austin, himself a professional planner, called out as “the epitome of ad hocery.”

So, yes, it’s appropriate to discuss Cleary’s role.

Understand that I firmly believe that politicians not only can, but sometimes should, change their minds. New information comes, circumstances change, better arguments emerge, more reflective thought occurs. And there were debatable nuances in the changes made through the various iterations of the Armco proposal.

But let’s step back and consider. Cleary was, I think, elected for two reasons.

One, he was not Linda Mosher. This may have been the defining reason, actually. The shelf life of all politicians eventually expires, and Mosher, the former councillor for the district, had built up considerable opposition because she was so clearly a lapdog for every development proposal that came along. The first time I talked at length with Mosher was back in 2008, when she drove me around her district; we stopped in Purcells Cove at the site where Mosher wanted a fast-ferry dock built, and she pointed up at the backlands, explaining that they could be developed once a ferry served as a work-around for the Armdale Rotary. Through all the years after, I don’t recall her opposing any significant development proposal. That sort of unblinking support for all development everywhere no matter the details built incredible enmity in the district. Just about anyone could unseat her; I think with a some slick brochures, Karla Homolka could’ve defeated Mosher.

But Shawn Cleary is no Karla Homolka. And that’s the second reason he got elected: He’s a nice guy who ran a campaign distrustful of development and explicitly opposed to the largest proposed development in the city, Armco’s Willow Tree proposal.

This is not a case of more information or nuanced arguments swaying a councillor to change his mind; rather, it’s a complete betrayal of voters.

Yesterday, Cleary made a couple of complaints about me: I don’t have a degree was one, but the second was that I should have called him before, er, Kimber wrote his piece.

I utterly reject the second. Cleary is a public figure. He makes public statements and public votes, and it’s appropriate to report on and critique him for those public statements and votes.

I’m not a fan of access journalism, or even much of talking to politicians more than I have to. I usually avoid press conferences and scrums unless I have a specific question that hasn’t been addressed in public. Politics shouldn’t be an insider game and, worse, politics shouldn’t be a game of spin, which is what private interviews usually entail. Say what you have to say before the TV cameras, and then we can all judge it.

As for Cleary’s first complaint, plenty of people came to my defence on Twitter yesterday, citing my past work, naming all the famous journalists without degrees, pointing out the inherent authoritarianism of credentialing reporters, and more. I appreciate that support! But I’m not sure what my credentials or lack thereof have to do with Kimber’s opinion.

The bottom line is that Cleary ran a campaign explicitly in opposition to Armco’s Willow Tree development, then utterly changed his position once his buddy Joachim Stroink was hired to lobby on Armco’s behalf.

Otherwise, in defence of my non-educated self, I am spending all day every day this week taking that Journalism class. Maybe one day I’ll have enough schooling to pass Cleary’s demanding credentialing measure. I can only hope.

It’s kind of crazy, though: even without a degree, I’m not so stupid that I don’t know how to read a byline.

2. Dine and dash

Yesterday, Erica Butler questioned the legality of restaurants requiring servers to cover the bills of people who “dine and dash.” A few hours later, Jason Edwards, of the PinkLarkin law firm, published a blog post about the issue:

Whether an employer may make a deduction from a server’s wages for a dine-and-dash will depend on whether or not the Employer can show that the dash was the employee’s fault. In a dimly-lit, busy pub this might be difficult to prove. Servers are not security guards: they are busy serving.

It is also likely that deducting the equivalent of an entire bill for a meal and a few drinks will bring a server’s wage below the Code minimum.

3. R.I.P. Whitefish

The “build artificial habitat elsewhere for the endangered species so we can destroy their native habitat” schemes hardly ever work.


Government

City

Wednesday

Community Design Advisory Committee (Wednesday, 11:30am, City Hall) — the Centre Plan fiction continues.

Hobsons Lake at night. Photo: Chris Miller

Public Information Meeting RE: Hobson Lake Lands (Wednesday, 7pm, Bedford-Hammonds Plains Community Centre) — in January, the city bought Hobsons Lake and a few hundred acres of surrounding forest so that the land can be incorporated in the Blue Mountain–Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness Park. This meeting is to talk about what if any uses will be made of the land, where trails will be built, and (important to the neighbours) where parking lots and entrances will be placed.

Thursday

Transportation Standing Committee (Thursday, 1pm, City Hall) — Chrissy Mcdow, the owner of Lady Drive Her, the car service that provides women drivers for runs to and from the airport, is talking to the committee about creating a new category of taxi licences for women drivers so her company can operate in the rest of the city.

Port Wallace PPC Meeting (Thursday, 6:30pm, HEMDCC Large Meeting Room 1, Alderney Gate) — there’s no agenda posted as of Tuesday night.

Province

No public meetings for the rest of the week.


On campus

Dalhousie

Wednesday

Thesis Defence, Interdisciplinary PhD Program (Wednesday, 9:30am, Room 3107, The Mona Campbell Building) — PhD candidate Ping Lu will defend her ​​thesis, “Tai Chi: A New and Ancient Reality: The Socio-Cultural Context of Older People who Practice Tai Chi in Halifax, Canada and Jinan, China.”

Understanding the biological role of beta-glucosidase 2 [GBA2], a gene mutated in neurological disorders (Wednesday, 4pm, Theatre A, Tupper Medical Building) — PhD candidate Saki Sultana will talk.

Thursday

No public events.


In the harbour

2:30am: AS Felicia, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for Kingston, Jamaica
6am: Elektra, car carrier, arrives at Pier 31 from Zeebrugge, Belgium
11am: Elektra, car carrier, moves from Pier 31 to Autoport
9:30pm: Elektra, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea


Footnotes

I’ll be away from the internet all day.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Armco, city hall lobbyist registry, Councillor Lindell Smith, Councillor Sam Austin, Councillor Shawn Cleary and Willow Tree tower, councillor Waye Mason, dine-and-dash, Jason Edwards, Joachim Stroink, Linda Mosher, mapping class, RIP Whitefish, Shawn Cleary’s deleted post, Stephen Kimber

About Tim Bousquet

Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. email: [email protected]; Twitter

Comments

  1. Sean_Gillis says

    June 27, 2018 at 9:22 am

    Tim, a good open-source mapping program to check out is Q GIS. It has much of the functionality of ArcGIS, but is more user-friendly. Also free.

    Log in to Reply
    • Scott Hatcher says

      June 27, 2018 at 11:05 am

      I agree with Sean. Based on how you describe the way you’d like to use ArcGIS, I think QGIS is an excellent option you should consider. Best thing: it’s laid out in a very similar way to ArcGIS, and with many of the same tools. So what you learn in the class will be just as applicable in QGIS.

      https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html

      Log in to Reply
  2. Ken Donnelly says

    June 27, 2018 at 9:30 am

    There should be a minimum skin-thickness requirement for political candidates.

    Log in to Reply
  3. lhaiven says

    June 27, 2018 at 9:40 am

    If Shawn Cleary can’t stand the critical heat, he should get out of the political kitchen.

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  4. Ditta says

    June 27, 2018 at 10:03 am

    I am so disheartened. I hope Shawn Cleary is reading these articles using the subscription to The Examiner that was donated to him 🙂

    I was one of those folks who knocked on doors with Shawn Cleary in an effort to get Linda Mosher out. Every person in my neighbourbood spoke about the need to take the city back from the developers. I’ll be looking for someone else to vote for next election and am apologizing to my neighbours for any influence I might have had in their voting decisions.

    PS I don’t give a rat’s ass if you have a journalism degree or not….someone is feeling a tad uncomfortable and it’s probably not you.

    Log in to Reply
  5. Parker Donham says

    June 27, 2018 at 10:27 am

    I’ve written for the Cape Breton Post, the Halifax Daily News, the Coast, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, almost every weekly newspaper in Nova Scotia, the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun, the Calgary Herald, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Reader’s Digest, Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Canadian Geographic, and Atlantic Insight. I’ve appeared many times on CBC television, CBC radio, and CTV.

    I never attended journalism school.

    I would have checked with Shawn before taking up a career for which I was so manifestly unqualified, but, unfortunately, he hadn’t been born at the time.

    Journalism is not a profession requiring official credentials or certification. Anyone can do it. The Charter of Rights says so, in Section 2B.

    You can look it up.

    Log in to Reply
  6. Frank Cassidy says

    June 27, 2018 at 10:31 am

    I’d like to know Shawn Cleary’s qualifications for becoming a politician.

    Log in to Reply
    • Colin May says

      June 27, 2018 at 11:20 am

      He had the guts to put his name on the ballot and then go door to door ‘begging for votes’.
      There are no qualifications for being a politician, the voters decide if you have the ability for the position.
      Try it sometime; based on my experience it is very interesting and almost everyone is polite.

      Log in to Reply
  7. Colin May says

    June 27, 2018 at 11:22 am

    The greatest journalists never had a degree in journalism, just a curious mind and persistence.

    Log in to Reply
  8. Helen Jones says

    June 27, 2018 at 1:53 pm

    GIS mapping has such powerful potential for protecting public health in so many ways … Just one example: the province has NO record of the locations of the thousands of drinking water wells in Nova Scotia (last I heard, there are well over 20.000 wells in HRM alone). This could be very well documented with GIS mapping techniques. So, when pesticide applications get approved (or any other accidental or intentional toxic releases), no one knows (or cares?) where the wells are, and of course nobody can enforce the legal setback distances required by law to protect them.

    Log in to Reply
  9. Eileen says

    June 27, 2018 at 2:26 pm

    I am so disappointed in Shawn Cleary! Like many others in my district, I was looking for a breath of fresh air in representation at City Hall. I was so sick and tired of City Council kissing the feet of the developers and ignoring the pleas for responsible development by its electorate. Shawn campaigned on just that premise. There were signs that Shawn wasn’t up for the job prior to Steve Kimber’s article, but this nailed it for me. Thank you, Tim, for reissuing Cleary’s (deleted) campaign crusade against the very development he now thinks is the cat’s meow!

    Log in to Reply
    • Yulinyhz says

      June 27, 2018 at 4:00 pm

      I 100% agree. That said, doesn’t HRM fall victim to the majority of councillors being from off the peninsula yet getting to vote on what happens there? It seems like the temptation to mess with those that live on the peninsula might be too great for those representing the rural parts of HRM? Maybe I’m wrong in thinking that.

      Log in to Reply
      • Colin May says

        June 27, 2018 at 5:22 pm

        That is the weirdest view of democracy I have ever heard.

        Log in to Reply
        • Yulinyhz says

          June 28, 2018 at 3:47 am

          Perhaps. I just imagine the rural representatives viewing the peninsula as elitist and favouring any move that increases overall revenues for HRM. Why would they care if a developer puts a 30 story high rise next to a Victorian heritage property in a south end family neighbourhood? If it lowers their resident’s tax rate by increasing revenues to HRM it’s a good move. They’re elected to represent their constituents not the peninsula’s.

          Log in to Reply
  10. Iain Taylor says

    June 27, 2018 at 4:22 pm

    Hi Tim, give me a call if you want to get together to learn about the fabulous world of paper maps – not yet digitised!

    Fire Insurance plans for instance.

    Mapman (& former Chief Geographer, Ottawa)

    Log in to Reply
  11. Evelyn C. White says

    June 27, 2018 at 4:39 pm

    Well … I was not here at the time.

    But it’s my understanding that the unparalleled investigative reporting of Tim “No Journalism Degree” Bousquet ended the political career, in this town, of a bad dude (and I’m not talking James Brown bad) named Peter Kelly.

    Memo to haters: Ya’ll better WERK (RuPaul style) if you intending to flex on TB. Or be prepared to GET SERVED, just like Shawn Cleary.

    Log in to Reply
    • gordohfx says

      June 27, 2018 at 9:46 pm

      What she said!

      Log in to Reply
    • Stroya19 says

      June 28, 2018 at 2:51 am

      PREACH

      Log in to Reply
  12. aj says

    June 28, 2018 at 3:45 pm

    I could not say it any better than Evelyn C. White.
    Shawn Cleary is a major disappointment to those that voted for him.
    My new name for him is 180 Degree Cleary.
    Tim you do an excellent job, keep up the professional journalism standard that exists in the Examiner!

    Log in to Reply
  13. SusieD says

    June 29, 2018 at 9:09 am

    Shawn Cleary is clearly pissed off that his hypocrisy has been laid bare. Well, tough luck, Shawn. Such is the life when you take political office. It is the job of true journalists to keep those in power in check…..and Tim Bousquet and his crew are doing exactly that.

    Log in to Reply
  14. Chris says

    June 29, 2018 at 3:22 pm

    Honestly Cleary has come off as a bit of a tool. The only other impression I have of him besides this turn around on the Armco thing was a twitter feud from a few months back where he accused some women from the PC party of misogyny because the old version of O’Canada was played during the party convention.

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