News

1. Cornwallis panelists to be discussed in secret

Photo: Halifax Examiner

Halifax council will today appoint the “special advisory committee” to determine what to do with the Cornwallis statue. The panel will comprise:

• Co-chairs from indigenous and non-indigenous community with leadership and chairing experience
• An even number of members with experience and expertise in the following areas:
— History and commemoration
— Military history
— Mi’kmaq history
— Indigenous and non-indigenous community experience

Continues the staff report:

There is a risk that some community members will question the validity of the panel, due to concerns with a selection process that differs from the standard Council public appointment process, or perceptions that panelists are seen not to represent a range of interests, to have too strong a bias or insufficient credibility in their communities.

Staff have attempted to mitigate this risk by talking to a range of individuals and organizations in the development of the terms of reference, by having an appropriate number of experts in relevant areas, setting out criteria for the selection of experts and by looking for characteristics of willingness to engage and community credibility in potential panelists.

Problem is, the “range of individuals” and the “criteria for selection” of the advisory committee members is secret:

The proposed approach with respect to naming panelists is outlined in the accompanying in-camera staff report. Once finalized and confirmed, names of panelists will be released publicly.

Later in the council agenda, under the in camera section, comes this:

That Halifax Regional Council:
1. Approve the recommendations as outlined in the private and confidential staff report dated September 26, 2017; and, 
2. It is further recommended that the private and confidential report dated September 26, 2017 not be released to the public.

This is, indeed, the standard Council public appointment process for selecting members of the council advisory committees, and that’s exactly the problem.

I’ve been discussing this issue since 2009, when then-councillor Linda Mosher brought forward a motion to make all committee appointments in public:

Unlike city employees, board and commission members are making policy. In some cases, they are making policies that can potentially cost the public millions, even billions, of dollars. (The Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission, for example, is advocating for a third harbour crossing that will cost at least $1.1 billion; the Water Commission is making decisions on assets worth several billion dollars.)

Board and commission members are directing policy, not implementing policy —and these policy decisions are political decisions. And just as other people making political decisions — councillors themselves — are selected in public, with public scrutiny, board and commission members should be subject to public scrutiny.

[…]

Halifax council is using bogus “privacy” concerns to take public policy issues — that is, politics, the public’s business — out of the realm of the public and put it behind a wall of secrecy.

Back in 2009, then-councillor Gloria McCluskey pointed out that the old City of Dartmouth made its appointments in public, and the sky didn’t fall. I’ve seen councillors in other cities discuss the relative merits of board applicants in public session, and while councillors often disagreed, the conversations were respectful and the public came away with an understanding of how the collective council made its decision.

As for the advisory committee on the Cornwallis statue, council should not follow its customary process and should instead have the entire debate — from picking the advisory committee members to hashing out the issues to making a recommendation — in public, so every aspect of it can be understood and documented. The very last thing we need here is a suggestion that decisions were made in secret to protect secret agendas.

2. Wrongful Conviction Day

Yesterday, members of the provincial NDP rose at the legislature to commemorate Wrongful Conviction Day. Here are Lenore Zann’s comments:

Mr. Speaker, gender often impacts wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice. As NDP Status of Women spokesperson, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that over 80 per cent of all incarcerated women, and over 90 per cent of Indigenous women, are victims of sexual or physical abuse. Many victims of abusive relationships are coerced into criminal activity.

The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies have helped many battered women imprisoned because they fought back against their abuser or pled guilty to offences that they did not commit in hopes of returning to their children. Sexually-exploited women continue to be victimized through incarceration.

Women who are victims of trauma need healing, not criminalization. Prison is not a shelter for battered women, a sexual-assault counselling session, or an appropriate place for women suffering from mental illnesses or addiction. As Poet Laureate and activist El Jones writes: On Wrongful Conviction Day, we call for justice and alternatives to incarceration for abused, exploited, and victimized women.

Glen and his daughter Tanya, outside the courtroom in Halifax after being released from custody in November 2014. Photo: Halifax Examiner

Susan Leblanc spoke about the Glen Assoun case:

In 2014, Glen Assoun was released from prison pending federal review of his 1999 murder conviction. He had spent 16 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Brenda Way. The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, now known as Innocence Canada, believes a terrible miscarriage of justice occurred in this case.

A national non-profit organization that has helped exonerate 21 Canadians does not move forward on a case unless it is convinced that a defendant is truly innocent. His release on bail holds great symbolic and practical significance in the battle to restore his innocence, because it means that sufficient doubt has been raised about his conviction. The new evidence shows that the prosecution’s case had no credibility, and it also raises serious, disturbing questions about how such a serious failure of justice came to occur.

Today, on Wrongful Conviction Day, we are urged to think about those still facing a difficult uphill battle to correct a wrongful conviction.

The wrongful conviction of Glen Assoun was the subject of the first three parts of my Dead Wrong series.

Other MLAs commemorated Donald Marshall, Jr. and Viola Desmond.

Next Tuesday, I’ll be part of a panel discussion on Wrongful Convictions at the School of Law at Dalhousie. More details on that soon. Also, if all goes according to plan, for this week’s Examineradio podcast I’ll be interviewing Ron Dalton. Dalton was wrongfully convicted and spent 10 years in prison for the death of his wife; he is now the co-Chair of Innocence Canada.

3. IWK

Tracy Kitch. Photo: Career Women Interaction

“The IWK Health Centre says it will pursue a legal claim against former CEO Tracy Kitch in a bid to recover approximately $10,000 in outstanding personal expenses charged to the Halifax children’s hospital,” reports the CBC:

Nick Cox, a spokesperson for the hospital, said in an email that as of 3:45 p.m. Monday it had not received the money it says Kitch still owes.

I have no evidence, but I still think this goes far beyond Kitch.

4. Sydney Waterfront

The pee-coloured parcels are the municipally owned land to be “redeveloped.”

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality issued an Expression of Interest this morning for the “Redevelopment of the Sydney Waterfront“:

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is the owner of approximately 4 acres of vacant land strategically located on the waterfront in Sydney, the largest urban area in the Municipality. The area is located immediately adjacent to the Joan Harris Cruise Pavilion, the arrival point for the more than 100,000 cruise ship visitors that the Port of Sydney welcomed in 2013. The site is also bordered by the Sydney boardwalk, a focal point for summer activities, and a small marina and breakwater which are owned by the Municipality. Two of Sydney’s largest hotels, the downtown Sydney shopping district, the North End Sydney Heritage Conservation District, and the region’s largest sports and entertainment complex (Centre 200) are all located within walking distance of the site.

The Municipality recently partnered with Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation to prepare a concept plan to guide development of the Sydney waterfront in the coming decades. The plan, which was presented to Council in July of 2014, is an ambitious and visionary document and all future development on the waterfront will be evaluated in the context of this plan.

The Municipality is now seeking for expressions of interest from developers interested in municipally owned parcels of land on the waterfront.

I can’t wait to hear what Mary Campbell has to say about this.

5. Treaty rights and climate change

Rebecca Moore. Photo: Bruce Wark

“A Mi’kmaq woman from the Pictou Landing First Nation says indigenous treaties can be a key tool in the fight against climate change,” reports Bruce Wark:

[Rebecca] Moore, who is a community energy campaigner with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, said the treaty can form the basis for an environmental alliance between indigenous and settler communities.

“We can use the position that indigenous people have, the inherent rights to the land and to protecting the land,” Moore said, “to keep it safe and to protect it.”

She added, for example, that treaty rights can be used to challenge companies that damage the environment when they extract resources from Crown lands. Treaty rights can also be used, she said, to reclaim Crown lands for better uses, but the key is to use these rights as part of a broader alliance.

6. Tom’s

I’m told a sale of Tom’s Little Havana and the Fireside restaurant fell through last week. Owner Tom Wile has committed to running the operations through the winter, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess.

My sense of it is that the move to City Centre Atlantic from the Doyle Block didn’t really affect Tom’s dedicated clientele, but it’s a few steps too far for occasional drinkers. Plus, the smell of stale garbage from Pete’s loading dock next door killed any hope for the sidewalk patio. And the old Fireside was date night central, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t carried over to the new location.

I hope this all works out. The employees are fine people.

7. “Get a life”

Yesterday morning, I linked to a promotional video for the Spring Garden and Area shopping district, noting that “the ad is horribly stereotyping and insulting.”

Later in the day, CBC reporter Kayla Hounsell noted that “Two Spring Garden-area business owners are criticizing a commercial meant to draw people to the Halifax retail district in a fun, lighthearted way and are calling for it to be removed from the internet.”

Hounsell went on to interview Johanna Galipeau, the owner of Sweet Pea Boutique, and Courtney Jones, owner of Better Than Her Boutique, both of whom objected to the video and said sensible things about how insulting it was.

Then, Hounsell interviewed John Young, who is on the board of directors of the Spring Garden Road Business Association, and who said:

It’s not intended to be a morality play, it’s not intended to preach, it’s not intended to be a documentary, it’s just a little bit of whimsy and fun. Relax and enjoy it. Get a life.

Well, I guess it’s heartening to see business people who don’t give a crap about what their potential customers think. But I wish the not-giving-a-crap was in defence of some important social value and not in defence of demeaning women with horrible stereotypes.

There are hundreds of ways to be whimsical and fun without representing women as vapid.

7. Reclaiming My Time Stout

YouTube video

Halifax Examiner contributor Evelyn White has brewed a beer!

Working with Kelly Costello, the brewer at Good Robot, White created a small-batch beer that will be tapped this afternoon, around 4pm or so. In White’s words: “Resplendent with caramel, honey and chocolate notes (beer marketing lingo), the beer I’ve christened ‘Reclaiming My Time’ stout has been inspired by U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (an unrelenting opponent of the Trump administration) and Federal Liberal MPs Catherine McKenna and Celina Caesar-Chavannes.”

White worked with Costello through the brewery’s “Communibrew” program, which matches up amateur brewers with the professional staff and equipment at the brewery. White tells me that people of colour (“including some with name brand African Nova Scotian roots”) who otherwise might not have felt at home in the typical “white hipster vibe” at most craft breweries have been welcomed at Good Robot.

I’ll swing by after the council meeting, probably around around 5pm or so. All are welcome to join.


Government

City

Tuesday

City Council (Tuesday, 1pm, City Hall) — here’s the agenda.

Wednesday

Shaw Mayor Mike Savage. Photo: Halifax Examiner

Federation of Canadian Municipalities 2018 Conference Advisory Committee (Wednesday, 1pm, City Hall) — here’s everything you have to know about the FCM meeting:

9.1.1 Sponsorship Opportunity for Mayor’s Welcome Reception
Motion:
That the FCM 2018 Conference Advisory Committee approve Shaw Communications as the sponsor of the Mayor’s Welcome Reception. 

Maybe the mayor will wear a suit like NASCAR drivers do, emblazoned by the logos of the companies he shills for.

There goes the Lion’s Head (Wednesday, 7pm, Maritime Hall, Halifax Forum) — this is a public information meeting unveiling W.M. Fares Group’s proposal to build a 10-storey, 114-unit apartment building on the parcel now occupied by the Lion’s Head Tavern.

The Lion’s Head will survive — I think it’s moving up the street to the new high rise where Michael’s used to be, but I might have that detail wrong.


Province

Tuesday

Legislature sits (Tuesday, 1pm, Province House)

Wednesday

Public Accounts (Wednesday, 10am, Province House) — Auditor General Michael Pickup will release his report of provincial finances.

Legislature sits (Wednesday, 1pm, Province House)


On campus

Dalhousie

Tuesday

Food Production (Tuesday, 12pm, Room 1009, Kenneth C. Rowe Building) — a panel discusses “Farms, Fisheries and Food: Canada’s Next Generation of Food Production.”

Geometric Spaces in a Tangent Category (Tuesday, 2:30pm, Room 319, Chase Building) — Geoff Crutwell from Mount Allison University will talk about his work with Rick Blute and Rory Lucyshyn-Wright. The abstract:

A connection on the tangent bundle of a smooth manifold arises frequently in differential geometry, and gives as a consequence associated notions of curvature, parallel transport, and geodesics. In this talk, we look at how to define such connections in the abstract setting of a tangent category, calling an object equipped with such a connection a “geometric object”. We look at three different aspects of this theory of such objects: (1) how one can define maps between such geometric objects, giving a new tangent category, (2) what it means for such connections to be “flat” and “torsion-free”, (3) how to characterize flat torsion-free connections as “connection-preserving connections”. The last result appears to be new in differential geometry.

Marijuana — Is Canada Ready? (Tuesday, 5pm, McInnes Room, Student Union Building) — a panel discussion with Anne McLellan, Dalhousie University Chancellor and former deputy prime minister of Canada; Darrell Dexter, former Nova Scotia premier; and Archie Kaiser, Sylvain Charlebois and Eileen Donovan-Wright from Dalhousie.

Community-based Rehabilitation (Tuesday, 5pm, Theatre A, Tupper Building) — Rachel Thibeault from the University of Ottawa will speak on “Could Community-based Rehabilitation Provide Tools for Connecting University Students to Communities?”

Wednesday

Molecular and Physiological Functions of circRNAs (Wednesday, 4pm, Theatre A, Tupper Medical Building) — Sebastian Kadener from Brandeis University​ will speak.


In the harbour

5am: Atlantic Sun, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for New York
6am: Spica, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Nassau
6:15am: Norwegian Dawn, cruise ship with up to 2,808 passengers, arrives at Pier 20 from Sydney
6:30am: Lake Superior, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Southampton, England
7am: Mein Schiff 6, cruise ship with up to 2,700 passengers, arrives at Pier 31 from Saint John

Serenade of the Seas. Photo: Halifax Examiner
Serenade of the Seas. Photo: Halifax Examiner

7:30am: Serenade of the Seas, cruise ship with up to 2,580 passengers, arrives at Pier 34 from Boston
8:45am: Anthem of the Seas, cruise ship with up to 4,180 passengers, arrives at Pier 22 from Bar Harbor
10am: Damia Desgagnes, asphalt tanker, arrives at McAsphalt from Sainte Victoire, Quebec
4pm: Atlantic Sun, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for New York
4:30pm: Norwegian Dawn, cruise ship, sails from Pier 20 for Saint John
5:45pm: Lake Superior, car carrier, moves from Autoport to Pier 31
6:30pm: Anthem of the Seas, cruise ship, sails from Pier 22 for Saint John
6:30pm: Mein Schiff 6, cruise ship, sails from Pier 31 for New York
9:30pm: Lake Superior, car carrier, sails from Pier 31 for sea


Footnotes

Fall.

Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. Twitter @Tim_Bousquet Mastodon

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18 Comments

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  1. I am astounded at the ridiculous level of hemming and hawing that has to take place to get rid of a statue.

    Tim has previously dug up the coverage devoted to the original unveiling, but how much discussion, debate, and consultation went into putting the damn thing up? My guess is none or next to none.

    If putting up statues of disagreeable people requires no reflection, why the hell do we need to think so hard about taking the damn things down?

  2. Any process which is kept secret, whether it be in-camera meetings or appointments to boards and commissions made behind closed doors means that somebody has something to hide. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

  3. One of the things I always appreciated about Jennifer Watts was her commitment to open meetings. When we were on the library board, she regularly questioned whether items listed as in-camera on the agenda had to be discussed in secret, and if the reasoning seemed iffy would argue (often successfully) to have them moved to open session.

  4. With regards to the Spring Garden Road ad I’m struck at the overblown response against “demeaning women with horrible stereotypes” compared with the fact that no one has commented on the sexual objectification of the shirtless male jogger!

    1. It probably wasn’t mentioned because sexual objectification of men is not a common stereotype (not yet anyway). That particular stereotype is generally reserved for us women-folk. (Aren’t we lucky?) But it definitely should have been noted, so well done. However, I wouldn’t consider the response regarding women to have been overblown. The whole ad was an exercise in regurgitation-control. I am embarrassed for everyone involved.

  5. My thoughts are a bit off the topics for today’s issue of the Examiner. On the waterways, vessels that are not under motor driven power are given the right of way, primarily because that lack of power makes them less able to get out of harm’s way. Bicycles are far more maneuverable; but are still similarly at risk when it comes to a conflict between a bicycle and a motor driven vehicle. Yet the right of way ruling does not exist to favour the bicycle… I find that interesting. First off let me say that I drive a motor driven vehicle 99.9% of the time when I am traveling on the road, so I am not one of the bicycle riding few that use their own muscles to propel their preferred method conveyance. I just find it interesting that the right of way afloat is so different than than when on land. Of course the aspect of drowning could well be the contributing factor that justifies the difference. Just some of my idle thoughts, sorry for the intrusion.

  6. Well done Tim, your criticism of the proposed secrecy regarding the composition and conduct of the Cornwallis statue committee is well founded but I fear Council will ignore such a stance. Nova Scotia thrives on privacy in public life and I blame the Presbyterians and Catholic immigrants from long ago.
    HRM council and committees are not allowed to have any religious ceremonies prior to or during a meeting and I assume the smudging ritual will not feature as part of the
    Cornwallis statue discussions. (Fat chance)

    1. Just another landmark being erased. Just another reason why I am so happy I left Halifax to the developers.

  7. Is there a procedure in Nova Scotia for complaining about municipal committee meetings held in camera that should not be in camera? When they can go in camera is usually defined by law.

    The law is next to useless in NB, unless you want to hire a lawyer and bring some kind of application or suit. In Ontario, there is a functionary to whom complaints about illegal in camera meetings can be made, and the functionary has power to act.

    The Supreme Court of Canada has held that if a municipal council discusses a matter at a closed meeting which should have been open, then a subsequent decision made on the matter at an open meeting can be quashed by the court. (The discussion is behind closed doors, but they have to come out of in camera to move and vote, so this is almost always the way it works out) But that isn’t much use to journalists who don’t want to quash a decision, just know how it was arrived at.

    It might make sense to expand the information and privacy commissioner’s role to take this in. Here in NB the commissioner (who just changed the name of the office to something else) can only deal with documents under the access laws, not illegally closed meetings. It would make sense if they were dealt with together.

    I have in the past made an access request for all notes records documents etc from a closed meeting, and threatened to complain to the commissioner if they weren’t released, because if the meeting was improperly closed, the paperwork should not be a secret. I am not sure if it would work, as I’ve always managed to work something out before it got that far — the commissioner takes forever to make a ruling, and even then, in NB the ruling of the commissioner can simply be ignored. And it often is.

    The report you mention as being kept secret might be subject to an access request, even if the meeting was closed. I’d probably take a shot at it.

    The province isn’t much better. They themselves hold secret legislative committee meetings – the legislature itself is not subject to any of these laws – and it is always a prolonged fight getting any meaningful documents on an access request from provincial departments.

  8. Given that the choice of panel members for the Cornwallis panel *is* the decision process about the statue’s removal, there should be no secrecy in choosing them. If it’s stacked with activists or the professionally woke, why even bother paying them to discuss it? On the other hand, if it was representative of Halifax (90% white and mostly opposed to the statue’s removal) it would be called white supremacist or something (even though it’s just representative democracy) – and again, why bother paying them to discuss it?.

      1. I stand corrected, but my point stands – the decision the panel will make is downstream of the panel member selection and pretending otherwise – or choosing panelists in secret – makes a mockery of our democratic institutions. I don’t care if the statue goes. It was built in the 1930’s – I would support keeping it if, say, it was built in the late 18th century, shortly after Cornwallis’ death, and Cornwallis was a bad dude even by the standards of his time.

        I suspect that the removal process for the Cornwallis statue will be the blueprint for future fake-democratic procedures for the removal/renaming of anything the activist community doesn’t like. Either way, its a thorny issue – but it’s part of the broader story of elite opinion being wildly out of step with popular opinion.

        Did you know that there’s a Chinese version of ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’? It’s referred to by the idiom ‘Point Deer Make Horse’ – based on a (true!) story where a new emperor, who had a shaky claim to the throne, brought a deer to court one day and pretended it was a horse. Anyone who pointed out that it was actually a deer was executed later – the emperor ruled for a long time. Hans Christian Andersen was so optimistic in comparison. The more things change…

  9. Maybe I missed it but why do the drawings of the 10-storey building at Young, Robie and Agricola only show 6-storeys in the illustration? Is it HRM’s perma-fog or just no vision?
    And how’s about the 2015 traffic report’s conclusion that there will be no effect on traffic from adding 125 parking spaces to this location?

    1. I’m confused. The drawings quite clearly show 10 storeys. Also, the TIS does not say there will be no effect on traffic, it says there will be no significant effects on level of performance. I.e. there will be more cars, but the adjacent street network can accommodate them.

      Tim, from the way I read the TIS it looks like the new tavern is planned to be accommodated on the site.

    2. It shows ten storeys on the drawings. It steps down to 6 on the Agricola side, maybe thats what you mean? The TIS concluded that “…site generated trips are not expected to have any significant impacts to the level of performance of adjacent streets and intersections near the development.” It didn’t say there would be no impact. This is true: one development will not significantly impact street performance. A true examination of traffic volumes would not take a piecemeal approach such as a TIS for one site, but consider the capacity of streets for multiple developments. I’m not sure if such an approach is influencing decision making at the long term planning level, but I digress. This project follows the intent of the Centre Plan and adds density in an area that needs it so any minimal traffic impact is an acceptable outcome.