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When is a management fee a profit margin, and does calling it either make it any less a boondoggle?

Lawyers for Bay Ferries and the provincial government were in court last week arguing we should not be allowed to know how much the province is paying Bay Ferries not to operate a ferry between Yarmouth and Maine. Only in Nova Scotia, you say.

November 15, 2020 By Stephen Kimber

On Thursday, lawyers for the McNeil government and Bay Ferries Limited appeared before Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Richard Coughlan to dissect the deliberative differences between a “management fee” and a “profit margin,” and to make clear that, in either case, neither is any of our business. The subject before the bar is a secret...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Bay Ferries CEO Mark MacDonald, Stephen MvNeil, Yarmouth ferry

What if we just gave Americans cash to come to Nova Scotia?

Crazy? Is it any crazier than pouring more millions of dollars into an American ferry, American docking facilities, American customs officers...?

June 16, 2019 By Stephen Kimber

Say, here’s an idea. My idea isn’t quite the Chase-the-Ace, get-us-on-national-TV, fun-and-games scheme Tim suggested a few months back. “Simply toss 20 dollar bills from a helicopter above downtown Yarmouth,” he proposed as his own common sense alternative to pouring still more millions of our tax dollars into that bottomless ocean that is our from-nowhere-to-no-way-not-now...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Bay Ferries, Bay Ferries CEO Mark MacDonald, Minister Geoff MacLellan, Nova Star, Premier Stephen McNeil, Tina Comeau, Tourism Nova Scotia, Yarmouth ferry

Stunting 101: The games Bay Ferries plays

Bay Ferries says its Yarmouth ferry service's real problem has nothing to do with the government's over-subsidization or its own over-pricing. Blame it on the "nasty" opposition.

March 31, 2019 By Stephen Kimber

Mark MacDonald knows which donkey to pin the blame on for the fact his Bay Ferries Ltd.’s money-sinking pot of a Yarmouth-Maine ferry service isn’t winning the accolades he believes it deserves from Nova Scotia taxpayers. Forget the $61,187,310 in previously announced subsidies, grants and other goodies those same taxpayers have shovelled into the service...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Bay Ferries CEO Mark MacDonald, Freedom of Information, Government secrecy, Minister Lloyd Hines, PC leader Tim Houston, Yarmouth ferry

The cost of the Yarmouth ferry keeps increasing

Morning File, Friday, February 8, 2019

February 8, 2019 By Tim Bousquet 12 Comments

News 1. Jackson trial This item refers to sexual assault. Yesterday was the fourth day of the sexual assault trial of Blake Jackson. Jackson, a student support worker at Citadel High School, is accused of sexually assaulting a then-student on December 15, 2015. At the time, the student was 18 years old; a publication ban protects […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Allen Campbell, Annette Higgins, Atlantic Fleet Services, Bar Harbor, Bar Harbor ferry terminus, Bay Ferries, Bay Ferries CEO Mark MacDonald, Becky Pritchard, Blake Jackson trial, Cora Plourd Nicholson, Cornell Knight, Ed Morin, former premier Robert Ghiz, Harvey Amani Whitfield, Justice Christa Brothers, Michael Mayne, Michael Tutton, PEI Liberals lawsuit, Peter McGuire, Robert Devet, Sean McCarroll, slavery in Nova Scotia, Spencer Campbell, Stephen Archibald and building faces, Stephen Lewis, Susan Holmes, Svetlana Tenetko, Theresa Wright, Tom Singleton, United Nations (UN), Yarmouth ferry, Yarmouth Ferry terminus

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

A young white woman with dark hair and a purple shirt lies on a large rock at dusk, looking up at the sky and playing her banjolele.

Episode 85 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Logan Robins (writer/director/composer) and Katherine Norris (star/composer) of the Unnatural Disaster Theatre Company are on the show this week ahead of their provincial tour of HIPPOPOSTUMOUS, Robins’ musical exploration of invasive species, colonization, environmentalism, and history. Hear how Pablo Escobar’s personal hippos have invaded and are ruining a section of Colombia, why Robins was intrigued to make a show about it, and all the places you can catch it this July. Plus Norris cracks out the banjolele to perform one of the show’s songs. And the new jam from Beauts!

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

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