The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. Please help us continue this coverage by subscribing. On Friday, Premier Iain Rankin announced plans to spend $96.5 million to renovate 17 long-term care facilities across the province and add 264 new nursing home beds in the long-term care homes in Nova Scotia Health’s Central […]
Take this volunteer “job” and shove it
Morning File, Thursday, July 2, 2020
News 1. The casino crapshoot Rob Csernyik has an incredible investigative piece on the casinos in Nova Scotia and how locals, not high-rolling tourists, became the big spenders. Csernyik looks back before the first casino opened by ITT Sheraton in the summer of 1995. A poll from 1993 showed that 57.7 respondents were against the […]
Hospitals, harassment, and a helluva lot of garbage
Morning File, Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Erica Butler here, filling in for Tim while he’s off learning stuff. News 1. Cape Breton Hospitals: two down, two expanded The province has announced a plan to close two Cape Breton hospitals, replacing them with community health centres. Emergency room services and acute care beds will be absorbed by expanded facilities at two other […]
Fool’s gold
Nova Scotia's Myopic Pursuit of Metals & Minerals (Part 2)
A Halifax Examiner / Cape Breton Spectator investigation. This is the second in a series of articles on the push for mines and quarries in Nova Scotia. You can find Part I here. Going for gold The CEO and chairman of Vancouver-based Atlantic Gold Corporation, Steven Dean, a man with a history of international coal and […]
Toxicologist Douglas Hallett raises concerns about Lafarge tire-burning
A citizens’ group opposed to the burning of tires for fuel at the Lafarge cement plant in Brookfield is asking a court to consider a report from a toxicology expert as part of its judicial review of the Nova Scotia Environment Minister’s decision to approve a one-year pilot project. Douglas J. Hallett (M.Sc and Ph.D...
How much would you pay for what remains of Stephen McNeil’s dignity? Morning File, Friday, October 13, 2017
News 1. $750 “Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil bristled Thursday under NDP questioning about a Liberal fundraising club that will hold an event this weekend at the governing party’s annual general meeting,” reports the Canadian Press: During the legislature’s question period, NDP Leader Gary Burrill asked McNeil whether paying the $750 yearly fee to attend the […]
NDP re-introduces same tire-burning ban bill introduced — and passed — by the Liberals in 2008
Talk about déjà vu. NDP Environment critic Lenore Zann has resurrected a bill that Liberal MLA Keith Colwell introduced 10 years ago to ban tire-burning in Nova Scotia. All three political parties passed it in 2008 but the law was never proclaimed. Don’t expect the Liberals to pass a carbon copy of their previous bill...
The Ceramic Cartel must be brought to its knees: Morning File, Monday, June 5, 2017
News 1. Beatrice Hunter “Police have taken an Inuk woman into custody in Happy Valley-Goose Bay after she refused to promise a Supreme Court of N.L. judge she would stay away from the Muskrat Falls construction site in Central Labrador,” reports Justin Brake for the Newfoundland and Labrador Independent: Beatrice Hunter, a mother, grandmother and land […]
Four more years… What might have been
Just as Stephen McNeil walked on to the stage to acknowledge his new minority government reality, CBC news announcer Sandy Smith cut in. There’d been yet another change in the party standings, he said, and Stephen McNeil’s Liberals were now in “majority territory.”
For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV broadcast. At that point, the CBC decision desk still couldn’t say for certain...
Might, In Fact, Get Fooled Again: Examineradio, episode #114
Nova Scotia had an election, eh? The end result is the Liberals have a few fewer seats, the PCs and NDP have a few more, and Gary Burrill no longer has to holler questions from the press gallery. One striking upset was the defeat of cabinet minister Joanne Bernard at the hands of NDP newcomer […]