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NEWS

1. Open letter calls on council to reject police budget increase

“A group of HRM residents, businesses, and organizations have penned an open letter to Halifax regional council asking it to reject Halifax Regional Police’s request for an increase in its 2024-25 budget,” Suzanne Rent reports.

The Halifax Regional Police Budget is closing in on $100 million annually, and the Board of Police Commissioners has approved adding 22 more officers, at a cost of more than $4 million a year.

Rent gives a thorough recap of the background to the signatories’ objections, and speaks to some of those who have signed the letter, including criminology professor Dr. Jamie Livingston:

“It’s really clear that the municipality should be moving toward broadening the spectrum of services that respond to social needs in ways that don’t rely on the police,” Livingston said…

Livingston said he was also “quite baffled” by the board’s decision to move two officers into the public safety office, which implements the public safety strategy.

“The public safety strategy is almost entirely focused on developing non-police alternatives for things like mental health crises and that sort of thing,” Livingston said.

“It’s very bizarre to me to assign two police officers to an office whose focus is on developing non-police alternatives. I expressed my concern to the board of police commissioners about that decision.”

Livingston said he’s “not very optimistic” about council taking the group’s letter into account when voting on the police budget increase.

Click or tap here to read “Residents, businesses pen open letter asking council to reject Halifax police budget increase.”

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2. Province in talks with Annie Leibovitz over photos

More than a decade after the province received a gift of more than 2,000 Annie Leibovitz prints, the photos still have not been displayed. But talks are underway to try to resolve the situation, Jennifer Henderson reports:

Dramatic portraits of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Queen Elizabeth II, The Rolling Stones, Whoopie Goldberg and others cannot be exhibited without Leibovitz’s consent as she holds the copyright.

A provincial spokesperson tells Henderson the AGNS was in contact with Leibovitz’s team in December, and that “we are working to formalize a new agreement with the artist that would allow the AGNS to move forward with an exhibition.”

Henderson recaps the story of how we got to this point, and why Leibovitz is not the bad guy holding up the exhibit here.

Click or tap here to read “Province in talks with Annie Leibovitz.”

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3. 13-storey building proposed for site of heritage property in downtown Dartmouth

Zzap Consulting is hoping to build a mixed-use development on the site of a home that’s been registered as a heritage property since 1982, Suzanne Rent reports.

The heritage property is a one and a half storey home known as George and Mary Shiels House. It’s located at 86 Ochterloney Street, and was previously owned by Big Brothers / Big Sisters of Greater Halifax.

Rent writes:

The Shiels house, which was built around 1863, is a Gothic Revival vernacular style that was common in the Victorian area. The house’s features include local rubblestone foundation, centre gable with triangular window, Scottish dormers on either side of centre gable, and main entrance with sidelights and transom.

Zzap’s proposal would require plans to restore the home to its original form. That would include restoring original features of the home that have been removed, and restoring character-defining elements, such as windows, doors, and structural features, which need repairs.

In the story, Rent checks in on some other recent Zzap developments too.

Click or tap here to read “Developer proposing 13-storey mixed-use building at Dartmouth heritage property.”

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4. Bloomfield structural assessment finally completed

Developer Alex Halef’s Banc Investments has agreed to conduct a structural assessment of the former Bloomfield School property, according to CBC News.

As first reported by the Halifax Examiner, the city’s fire inspector questioned the property’s structural integrity, and demanded that an assessment be done by October 20, 2023. Banc appealed the order.

Now, CBC says, Banc has finally complied:

On Monday, just days before a hearing on the issue, a municipal lawyer sent a letter to the UARB stating that BANC has fulfilled the order to take action, and the appeal has been withdrawn.

Halifax spokesperson Laura Wright said in an email Monday that BANC has submitted the structural integrity report to the municipality.

Councillors and the public have called for development to get going on the site, but Halef said last May that he couldn’t afford to demolish the building and did not have firm plans yet.

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5. Canadian logging industry emissions under-reported

Benjamin Shingler of CBC News reports on a study which finds “Canada’s forestry sector is responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than show up in official tallies.”

From Shingler’s story:

The peer-reviewed study, published in the academic journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, found that annual greenhouse gas emissions attributable to forestry between 2005 and 2021 were, on average, nearly 91 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent — which would put the sector on par with emissions from the agricultural sector.

By contrast, Canada’s official inventory report shows the forestry sector acting as a carbon sink, which means it absorbs more carbon from the air than it sends into the atmosphere. The report has the sector absorbing an average of five million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually over the same period.

Why the discrepancy? It largely has to do with considering forests carbon sinks, and assuming that as they regrow, they will absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The story quotes Princeton professor Tim Searchinger, who questions this logic:

Searchinger has argued many assessments of timber or paper production wrongly treat the harvest of wood as having no effect on the climate — as being “carbon neutral” — so long as the harvest is sustainable.

That assessment, he explained, ignores the reality that if new wood harvests didn’t occur, forests would continue growing and take more carbon out of the air.

In an interview, Searchinger likened this to the flawed logic of someone saying, “I’m just going to steal some money out of your pension, but don’t worry about it. I’m only going to take out the amount that you put in this year. So you’re not going to be any poorer.”

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6. Loblaw Companies ending 50% discounts on ‘enjoy tonight’ items

Do you find it confusing when you go to the grocery store and see items approaching their sell-by dates on sale for discounts ranging from 30% to 50%?

If you do, Loblaws and related supermarkets are here to help. They are cutting through the confusion by creating more consistency across discounts, setting them all at 30%. Isn’t that thoughtful of them?

Yes, this is a real argument used by Loblaw Companies to explain why they are eliminating their 50% “enjoy tonight” discount.

Hafsa Arif of CTV News reports that the grocery leviathan is ending the discount, and quotes an email from Loblaw’s communications vp:

“Historically, our stores offered a range of discounts from 30-50% on the ‘serve tonight’ type of products,” said Catherine Thomas, Loblaw’s vice-president of communications. “We’re now moving toward a more predictable and consistent offering, including more consistency with our competitors.”

My favourite line from the story:

Experts say the move will result in more profit for the grocery chain.

No kidding.

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VIEWS

Marginalized candidates as ‘sacrificial lambs’

There is a federal election coming next year, and at least some of the parties will be touting the diversity of their candidate slates. But University of Ottawa Political Studies professor Luc Turgeon says we should be a little skeptical.

Turgeon and two of his departmental colleagues are the authors of a paper recently published in the journal Electoral Studies, which argues that candidates from marginalized groups “are more likely to be nominated in districts their party lost by a landslide at the previous election.”

Titled “Still sacrificial lambs? Yes! Minority groups in Canadian federal elections, 2015–2021” the paper looks at data from the last three federal elections, all of which were won by the Liberals.

I spoke with Turgeon about why minority candidates still face hurdles, and what can be done about it. This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Philip Moscovitch: Should we be skeptical about parties boasting about their diverse slate of candidates?

Luc Turgeon: Our findings essentially show that the two largest parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, are more likely to nominate minority candidates in ridings in which they have much less probability of winning. In the political science literature, and in day-to-day language also, we call that “sacrificial lambs.” What that means is they’re more likely to be nominated in ridings that their party lost by more than 15% in the previous election. That’s essentially the cut-off point in our study for what we call a landslide defeat. This is the case for all minorities, but it is especially the case for two groups: women, and members of the LGBTQ community.

PM: Were you surprised by the findings, particularly in relation to women?

LT: In some ways we were surprised. But, you know, in hindsight, maybe it’s not all that surprising because maybe there’s so much pressure to nominate women… It’s just that they end up not being nominated in seats they can easily win… We’ve been talking about increasing women’s representation for 30 years. Why has it been so slow? It’s partly because of the power of incumbency, and this is a very basic thing: name recognition matters, and incumbents are more likely to be re-elected. And incumbents tend to be men. So if we do nothing, it will take a while before things happen.

PM: How do the major parties differ on this? How are they going about seeking a more diverse range of candidates?

LT: The Liberals have objectives, and essentially they do request that local district associations make an effort to have a diverse slate of candidates. Why then are they more likely to nominate minority candidates in ridings that are hard to win?

We don’t know for sure. There are different explanations. One is that in these ridings basically it’s a low cost to nominate candidates from minority groups, when you have the objective of showing that you have a significant openness to diversity. It’s easier to nominate a candidate in these ridings, because fewer people want to run in these ridings. And so it allows the party to say, well, we have a very diverse set of candidates. Another factor to consider is that members of the majority group are less likely to want to run when they know they don’t have a lot of chance of winning. To put it bluntly, mostly white guys.

PM: How about the Conservatives and the NDP?

LT: The NDP has adopted a procedure whereby when a sitting, NDP MP does not run again, or retires, the next candidate must come from one of those historically underrepresented groups… So the NDP doesn’t have this problem as much, because they have adopted this policy — which is a controversial policy…

Obviously, one of the issues with the Conservative Party is that they tend to to be overrepresented in more homogeneous communities, rural communities especially… In terms of gender, it does play often, in the sense that we know that over the last decade or so the Conservative caucus has had a much lower rate of representation of women. [If the Conservatives win the next election] it might be the case that the proportion of women in Parliament declines, because they tend to have a lesser representation of minority groups. It would be interesting to redo our study the next time the Conservatives are in power, because in this case you might find that a lot of Liberal candidates will have been sacrificial lambs because they will lose by even more. So, those cyclical factors also matter.

PM: Why would someone choose to run in a riding they have no chance of winning? Are there any advantages for the candidates?

LT: Minority candidates might be more willing [than white guys] to run, because it maybe provides them with an opportunity they wouldn’t have otherwise, and it’s sometimes a way of building a resume, building networks. They might be more willing to, let’s say, take one for the team, in the hope that it might lead to some other opportunities later — including potentially running in ridings that might be more competitive…

There are also a lot of candidates that are essentially employees of the parties — staffers on the Hill. The party needs someone somewhere, and then someone will volunteer to do that. So, sometimes it is also about building your own reputation within the party. For some people, they are sacrificial lamb, but they very much do it for certain reasons. There are some benefits for them of doing that… But at the end of the day, it’s still the fact that those who might be more willing to take one for the team are minorities, or certainly from underrepresented groups. It doesn’t change that.

PM: What about people who look at these findings and take away the conclusion that, say, voters simply don’t want to elect women?

LT: It’s not because of voters. Other colleagues have done studies that show voters do not penalize women. Voters are as likely to vote for women as they are for men. That doesn’t explain the difference in voting. So the issue of under-representation of certain groups — the blocking is at the nomination stage, and the party nominating stage also…

There’s lament every election cycle that the representation of women is not increasing fast enough. And my view is that if we do nothing, it’s going to still take many decades before we arrive.

The qualifications of female candidates are — there’s evidence that they’re even more qualified often than men. So, it’s not a question of, “We need the most qualified person.” There’s something else happening there.

PM: Is there any good news in the study?

LT: If we put all the groups together in a category of “minority,” then minorities are absolutely, overrepresented in hard-to-win seats. But this is mostly because of women and LGBTQ candidates. And so the sort of good news is that visible minorities and Indigenous people are still less likely to be nominated, but it’s a very small margin… We can still say that they’re overrepresented in hard-to-win seats. But it’s just that the the margin is very small.

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Government

City

Today

Halifax and West Community Council (Tuesday, 6pm, City Hall and online) — agenda

Tomorrow

Audit and Finance Standing Committee (Wednesday, 10am, City Hall and online) — agenda

Heritage Advisory Committee (Wednesday, 3pm, online) — agenda

Public Information Meeting – Case 2023-01496 (Wednesday, 7pm, Eastern Shore Community Centre, Musquodoboit Harbour) — application for a development agreement to allow the subdivision of a new lot that will contain a 48-unit shared housing with special care facility (The Birches Nursing Home) on PID 40192528 in Musquodoboit Harbour. This is designated a Provincial Special Planning Area.

Province

Today

Veterans Affairs (Tuesday, 2pm, One Government Place and online) — True Patriot Love: Veterans Virtual Hub / Veteran Volunteerism; with a representative from the True Patriot Love Foundation

Tomorrow

Public Accounts (Wednesday, 9am, One Government Place and online) — Canada – Nova Scotia Childcare Agreement: Programming Impacts to Date and Funding Impact to the Province’s Finances; with a representative from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development

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On campus

Dalhousie

Generative A.I. and Assessment Design (Tuesday, 11:30am, online) — workshop on generative artificial intelligence (like ChatGPT) and assessments

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In the harbour

Halifax

12:00: Don Pasquale, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Zeebrugge, Belgium
15:00: STI Pontiac, oil tanker, moves from Irving Oil 3 to anchor
15:30: Volga Maersk, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for sea
16:30: MSC Cornelia, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for sea
23:59: East Coast, oil tanker, sails from Irving Oil woodside for sea

Cape Breton

14:00: CSL Tacoma, bulker, arrives at Coal Pier from Point Tupper
18:30: Altera Thule, crude oil tanker, arrives at Everwind 1 from Searose FPSO Offshore Terminal

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Footnotes

Not writing about the Newark airport today.

Instead, I want to share this track from Chuck D’s 2023 album, We Wreck Stadiums. I did not realize until the other day that Mr. Chuck D had released an entire album of baseball-themed songs. This one is about Dave “The Cobra” Parker.

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