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NEWS

1. Good-bye, Stephen

Stephen Kimber has written his last weekly column for the Halifax Examiner:

It’s time.

There are other stories I want to tell. A couple of novels I still want to write. And then there’s still teaching.

It’s time.

I’ve had a great run. I’ve been privileged to have the opportunity to express my opinions in public and lucky to work with many great editors and publications, including, most recently, Tim and the crew at the Examiner.

Click or tap here to read “It’s time to write -30- and thank you for the privilege.”

Stephen has been nothing but kind to me, and to the Examiner. I consider him a mentor, a guide post in this crazy business. He’s taught me by example, and explicitly as well, giving me advice on how to approach research or structure an article. More than that, he’s been a sympathetic ear, understanding more than anyone else could the challenges and travails of my job. He’s been a friend.

And still will be, undoubtedly. I know that we’ll continue to talk and he’ll continue to pop up at various journalism-related events.

Stephen’s got more work to do, and doesn’t need the ever-more-distracting, er, distraction of writing the column. Let me tell you, I understand exhaustion, and so I completely understand where Stephen is coming from. I think we’ll see some spectacular work from Stephen yet.

Farewell, Stephen.

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2. Herald pensions

Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Scott Norton has upheld a $2,656,656 judgment against the Halifax Herald related to the pension funds for employees represented by the Halifax Typographical Union, I reported this morning:

In his closely argued decision, Norton reviews the complicated history of The Herald and the financial pressures on it, as well as the Nova Scotia government’s repeated acts to water-down companies’ obligations to pension funds, in effect shifting some of the risk of financial failure of the funds onto retirees.

…

The Herald’s shift from a defined benefit program to a defined contribution program was one of the issues that led to a strike at The Herald’s newsroom (and a related strike by a different union at the printing press).

The strike was ultimately settled with a new union agreement that saw employees get a higher rate of pay than originally offered (albeit, still lower than pre-strike levels for new employees), but the agreement also secured the switch to a defined contribution pension. 

But then, The Herald simply stopped meeting its obligation to make sure the old defined pension was properly funded.

…

“Instead, The Herald preferred to use the money to fund its pivot into digital operations,” ruled Norton (the decision doesn’t further elaborate on this assertion). “The Herald was hopeful that pending changes to the Regulations would erase its obligations to make these payments.”

I get into what that legislation was and how it applied to The Herald. Basically, The Herald argued that 2020 legislation that watered-down the obligations for companies to keep the pension funds solvent should have been applied retroactively to 2018 and 2019. Neither the Superintendent of Pensions, nor the Labour Board, nor ultimately Norton were buying that argument.

And so the $2.6 million judgment against The Herald stands.

I begin today’s article with a short review of the multiple financial pressures on SaltWire, the owner of The Herald. None of this is particularly good for the companies, its employees, or the news-reading public.

Click or tap here to read “The Halifax Herald must pay $2.6 million in disputed pension payments, rules Supreme Court justice.”

I don’t have much more to say about this, except that SaltWire’s business strategy seems to be that it won’t pay any of the large bills facing it — whatever it owes the private equity fund, the $10 million and interest it owes Transcontinental, the $1.8 million it owes the CRA, the $2.6 million it owes into the pension plan — until it exhausts all the delays it can obtain through courts and otherwise, with the hope that the government and Google subsidy money will be enough to cover whatever bills it ends up having to pay.

What do I know? Maybe that strategy will work.

But I can’t imagine that strategy working for the Halifax Examiner. I think if I employed any of these delaying tactics, I’d be hanged chained upside down in a forgotten dungeon somewhere.

I’ll relate a tiny tax screw-up the Examiner had that was entirely my fault. As a matter of principle, we make all tax payments on time and in full, but a few months ago, the CRA contacted me to say the Examiner was in arrears for about a thousand dollars in payroll tax payments. The amount was trivial — less than 1% of our annual payroll tax payments — and we had enough money on hand to easily meet it, but I couldn’t understand how we could owe money (we’re pretty meticulous about such things), so I didn’t pay it. I was convinced it was a CRA mistake, not an Examiner mistake.

Well, one thing led to another, and the trivial amount went to collections before I was finally able to have a long and detailed conversation with a CRA employee who very patiently and helpfully walked me through two years of tax history. It turns out that it was indeed my mistake — I had failed to make the tax payments for the employees’ Christmas bonuses, and through some miscommunication on our end, that information was never conveyed back to me.

No biggie. Once I understood the problem, I paid the bill, and we’re once again in the good graces of the CRA. But it took the implied threat of being hanged chained upside down in a forgotten dungeon to concentrate the mind to get to that point.

I guess the owners of SaltWire don’t fear being hanged chained upside down in a forgotten dungeon. Maybe they know someone.

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3. Energy storage

“Ehren Cory, the CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), made his first-ever visit to Nova Scotia yesterday and delivered a promise of $138.2 million toward helping the province move off coal,” reports Jennifer Henderson:

The money will build a grid-scale battery energy storage system; it includes a $120.1 million loan to Nova Scotia Power and an $18 million loan to enable the participation of the Wskijinu’k Mtmo’taqnuow Agency (WMA) representing all 13 Mi’kmaw First Nations. 

…

Large scale battery storage systems will be required to back up additional amounts of renewable energy generated by wind farms now in the process of being built by companies other than Nova Scotia Power. 

Subject to approval by the Utility and Review Board, three project sites have been identified in Bridgewater, Waverley, and White Rock that could provide four hours worth of back-up electricity to the grid. 

This energy storage system carries a $354 million price tag and Nova Scotia Power CEO Peter Gregg says the low-interest loan from Canada Infrastructure Bank is a significant help toward making the project more affordable.

Click or tap here to read “Canada Infrastructure Bank to provide $138 million in financing for Nova Scotia Power energy storage project.”

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4. Electric buses

“Halifax Transit offered a tour of one of its new electric buses on Friday, with a goal of getting the new fleet on the road by next winter. But a lot more testing of the buses has to be done before that,” reports Suzanne Rent:

As the Examiner reported in July 2021, all three levels of government are funding the fleet of 60 electric buses for Halifax Transit. The cost of the project is $112 million. The federal government pitched in $44.8 million and the province covered $37 million. HRM covered the remaining $29.8 million.

The funding included the costs to purchases the buses, which are made by Nova Bus, but money was also needed to renovated the Ragged Lake Transit Centre. Halifax Transit’s goal is to electrify its entire fleet by 2028. There are about 340 diesel buses in the current fleet.

Click or tap here to read “Halifax Transit charges ahead to get fleet of electric buses ready for next winter.”

Electrifying the whole fleet in just four years is a remarkable achievement, if doable. I do worry about what will happen to the existing buses — I think at least some of the old Halifax Transit diesel buses are operating in Mexico, and I assume the existing fleet will be sold off as well, likely to be used for decades more somewhere else.

Still, it’s a good thing that our future buses are being electrified.

However…

From the above photo, it sure looks like the new electric buses have the absolutely terrible plastic seats that lead to passengers slipping this way and that with every turn and stop of the bus. Please tell me this is not the case, or if it is, that the seats will be replaced with proper cloth-covered seats.

I also thought all new buses were not going to have the step up at the rear? The step annoys me, because for some inexplicable reason it acts as a barrier for most standing passengers: ‘oh, can’t stand past the step, because there be monsters’ or some such. As a result, on very crowded buses, the front two-thirds is standing passengers crammed like sardines against each other, while the back third is gloriously open and free.

I get on one of those buses (through the front door because we can’t get on through the back door for reasons), and rudely push myself through the entire sardined mass to reach the gloriously free and open rear of the bus because a) why should I add to the sardined mass for the next on-boarding passenger? and b) if my rude pushing is making the other standing passengers uncomfortable it’s only their own damn fault because any one of them could have avoided this situation by simply moving back themselves.

I’m struck that bad bus design decisions that result in discomfort for passengers — the plastic seats, the rear step, the terrible “wave your hand” stickers, etc. — are made by people who have little or no experience actually using the bus as part of their daily lives.

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5. Food insecurity

“An HRM planner behind a program working to address food insecurity said the work is ‘more than numbers,'” reports Suzanne Rent:

JustFOOD is modeled after the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international agreement on urban food policies. HRM is one of the pact’s 200 signatories.

The action plan includes direct programming and impacts that support food security, such as community gardens, funding for community grants, community-based programs, and funding for African Nova Scotia and Indigenous efforts on food security. 

“This isn’t going to increase incomes, but this is going to amplify our voice and increase the pressure to those who have the power to make those change,” [Leticia Smillie is a senior planner with community safety at HRM] said. 

Click or tap here to read “‘More than numbers’: Halifax’s JustFOOD project working on food insecurity issues.”

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6. Irving death

A worker has died at the Irving Shipyard. No further details are available as of publication time.

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7. COVID

We’re all supposed to be living past COVID, and to that end Public Health has been obscuring the reporting on COVID, delaying the reporting of deaths and obscuring the data in other confusing ways. And it works. Not a lot of people are much worried about COVID.

But for the record, it terms of what I can glean from the weekly Respiratory Watch reports, so far in 2024, there have been 31 newly reported deaths from COVID in Nova Scotia. Some of those 31 probably died in 2023, and there are undoubtedly 2024 deaths that haven’t been reported.

In terms of the “season” — which is defined by the flu season, as there is not yet a definable COVID season — there have been 128 deaths from COVID since August 27, 2023. That compares to 29 deaths from influenza over the same period. So COVID is more than four times as lethal as the flu.

All but four of the COVID deaths, and all but two of the flu deaths, were of people 65 years or older. The risks to the elderly shouldn’t be ignored, says this person who isn’t so very far away from 65. But another way to read this is that so far as lethality goes, even people younger than 55 with pre-existing conditions aren’t at very much risk. Of course, becoming ill and placed in ICU with the resulting potentially life-long debilitating state may not be death, but it’s own kind of terrible.

Long COVID? While I haven’t been entirely up to date on all the latest literature, my read on it is that it is both under-emphasized and over-emphasized. I don’t have time to explain that here, but will get into at some later date.

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Government

City

Today

Special Joint Harbour East-Marine Drive Community Council, North West Community Council and 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

Province

Veterans Affairs (Tuesday, 2pm, One Government Place ) — agenda setting

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On campus

Dalhousie

Tomorrow

Open Dialogue Live: Improving Access to Pediatric Health Care in Atlantic Canada (Wednesday, 6:30pm, Theatre B, Tupper Medical Building and online) — hear from our panelists on their work and how it will improve access to health care for children and families here in Nova Scotia, across the Maritimes, and nationally

Mini Medical School (Wednesday, 7pm, online) — “Overview of what a Plastic Surgeon does/new procedures”, with Margie Wheelock

Saint Mary’s

Tomorrow

Cultural Preservation & Community Capacity Building Forum (Wednesday, 9:30am, Atrium 340) — continues Thursday; a two-day forum and call to action, bringing together students, educators, and community members for thought-provoking discussions and podcast recordings on past accomplishments and future opportunities for African Nova Scotian communities

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In the harbour

Halifax
03:45: One Stork, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for New York
05:00: Atlantic Sea, ro-ro container, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England
08:30: CMA CGM Osiris, container ship (154,995 tonnes), arrives at Pier 41 from Tanger Med, Morrocco
15:30: Atlantic Sea sails for New York
17:00: Tropic Hope, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for West Palm Beach, Florida
21:30: CMA CGM Osiris sails for New York

Cape Breton
11:00: CSL Tacoma, bulker, sails from Coal Dock (Sydney) for sea
13:00: CSL Metis, bulker, sails from Canso outer anchorage for sea
13:00: Navios Sakura, bulker, sails from Canso outer anchorage for sea

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Footnotes

I was very busy with a lot of personal stuff much of the weekend — all of it good and enjoyable, but also exhausting. So I slept fitfully Sunday night, long hours in bed but awakening and thinking of stupid shit for hours while waiting to fall back asleep.

One of the stupid things that occurred to me is that the movies Groundhog Day and The Matrix use the same plot device. Both place the hero as independent actors outside a constructed universe — the Time Loop and The Matrix, respectively.

In one, The Matrix, the hero, a perfect man, learns to use the constructed universe in a battle between good and evil, which yeah, whatever, show me a western or a man in tights movie.

In the other, Groundhog Day, the hero is a flawed man who learns over time that the constructed universe provides him the opportunity for self-reflection and improvement, a much more interesting theme, imo.

Like I said, stupid shit.

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