News
1. Bill 1
To no one’s surprise, the Liberals’ bill merging health authorities and reducing the number of nurses’ union bargaining units to four has passed, on a vote of 42-5. The PCs supported it, and the NDP opposed it.
I walked by Province House yesterday as the bill was being voted on, only to find that the public gallery had been closed. This is a horrible practice.
2. Rhyno suspended
Having been charged with human trafficking and sexual assault, Sackville lawyer Duane Rhyno has had his law licence suspended.
3. Stadium
Mayor Mike Savage sits in his bathtub, stares at his navel, and mumbles, “stadium, stadium.” The rest of us get on with our lives.
4. Castle
The Moncton Castle. Photo: historicplaces.ca
The Moncton Castle has been bought by a BC developer, which is neither here nor there, but I found this part interesting:
Also helping with the building’s restoration is the City of Moncton, which has established improved infrastructure like water and sewage.
The more I read about Moncton and New Brunswick, the more I think they’re even worse than Halifax and Nova Scotia in terms of giving free government services to rich people.
5. Wild Kingdom
Lobster catches decline near fish farms. That’s the finding of a paper published by Ron Loucks and Ruth Smith, of RH Loucks Oceanology Ltd. in Halifax, and independent researcher Brian Fisher. “Interactions between finfish aquaculture and lobster catches in a sheltered bay” was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, a publication of Elsevier, the scientific journal publisher. Read the paper here.
We lost most of our cod fishery years ago. I somehow missed this earlier this summer, but the depressing news is that the Gulf of Maine cod fishery is also collapsing.
Views
1. Bombs away
There’s always a good reason to kill people, and killing these particular people gives the Chronicle Herald happy bumps.
2. Clearcut
This aerial photo shows a logging operation in an environmentally sensitive area. Photo: Ecology Action Centre
Logging in Nova Scotia is poorly regulated, says the Ecology Action Centre’s Jamie Simpson in an op-ed published by the Chronicle Herald:
In practice, unfortunately, the Western Crown Lands Plan did not seem to have advanced forestry practices after all. Staff with the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) recently visited one of the designated and mapped “environmentally sensitive areas.”
It was, until a few weeks ago, a stand of natural forest with important wildlife habitat. It boasted mature red spruce and hardwood trees some 120 years in age — a forest type that was once common but is now exceptionally rare due to clearcutting.
On their recent visit, however, the EAC found that this so-called environmentally sensitive area had been clearcut.
3. Protest
The natives protesting the Alton Natural Gas Storage Project are uninformed, says Bill Black, unsurprisingly.
4. More on unions
Ralph Surrette gets points for using the word “envenom.”
Noticed
If you haven’t read it already, you should take a look at the Rolling Stone article “Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire.” It tells us a lot about what’s wrong with the US. Not that Canada is immune to this. Increasingly, I think of this country as controlled by an oiligarchy, with a controlled press that bows down before the fossil fuel extraction industry and a populace that, like families trying to survive in a neighbourhood controlled by the mob, sees no other solution than to join the criminal enterprise.
In the harbour
Ships near Nova Scotia this morning at 6:45am. Map: marinetraffic.com
(click on vessel names for pictures and more information about the ships)
Arrivals
Regatta, cruise ship, Sydney to Pier 22
Silver Whisper, cruise ship, Sydney to Pier 20
Maersk Pembroke, container ship, Montreal to Pier 41
Pearl Mist, cruise ship, Lunenburg to Pier 23
Departures
Algocanada to sea
CSL Tacoma to sea
Regatta to Saint John
Maersk Pembroke to Rotterdam
Pearl Mist to Charlottetown
Footnotes
Morning File takes Sundays off, so see you Monday.
How very brave of the author of the Herald piece in favour of sending our CF-18s to bomb Iraq to show solidarity by including all of their colleagues in this shared piece of opinion by publishing the article under the name, “The Chronicle Herald”. Don’t worry, IS/ISIS/ISIL isn’t beheading journalists in Canada, yet.
Tim, I’d say the word “oligarchy” is too mild to describe what’s happening. For example, Ursula Franklin sees globalizations as a form of warfare and occupation with puppet governments serving the occupiers. Here’s how she sees it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Globalization_as_warfare
Bruce, thanks for introducing Ursula Franklin and sharing the link to the article. Need to read more.
Good point about joining the criminal enterprise. There are at last 3 generations of Nova Scotians in Fort McMoney doing everything from working as engineers to driving trucks.
Here’s a recent example of the controlled press in action. A CBC personality advises guest on correct use of language: “We’re supposed to call them the oil sands.” Around 2:00.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2014/09/naomi-klein-on-her-new-book-this-changes-everything.html
Tim, any thoughts on Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything?
But Atlantic magazine uses the title “The Alberta Tar Sands” for this photo essay of the crime scene near Fort McMurray.
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/09/the-alberta-tar-sands/100820/
Healthcare bargaining units, not nurses’ union bargaining units.