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Rhetoric ramps up over non-resident property tax

Morning File, Tuesday, May 3, 2022

May 3, 2022 By Philip Moscovitch 14 Comments

News 1. Pitch your tent here … or else A Halifax staff report proposes sanctioning overnight tenting in some parks, and evicting people from all others in the municipality. The staff report, by parks and recreation special projects manager Max Chauvin and parks and recreation executive director Maggie MacDonald, comes to council today, Zane Woodford […]

Filed Under: Featured, Morning File Tagged With: Abegweit, Amanda Mull, Canada Fitness Awards, co-operative movement, Confederation Bridge, COVID-19, Diane Marleau, Dr. Deborah Money, employment, Epekwitk, exercise, fitness, Halifax city council, homelessness, housing, Maggie MacDonald, Max Chauvin, non-resident landowners, pregnancy, Presidential Fitness Test, PRICED OUT, Raymond Sewell, salaries, SARS-CoV-2, tax policy, taxation, The Atlantic, University of British Columbia, youth employment

Councillors cancelled the tank contract. Good. Now what?

We are in a moment. It has forced us to rethink what we mean by policing, and by public safety, and to begin to reimagine a world in which public safety does not necessarily mean a cop with a gun killing someone with whom he is supposedly conducting a “wellness check,” or six cops with guns subduing an unarmed 23-year-old woman navigating two kids through a Walmart because someone thought she might be shoplifting because... well, because she’s Black.

June 14, 2020 By Stephen Kimber 5 Comments

Is this “a moment?” It depends. On what we do next. And the next after that. It has been a stunning week in a shocking month in a stranger-beyond-strange year. And it is only the middle of June. On Tuesday, our city councillors voted 15–1 to overturn a decision they’d made by a vote of […]

Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured Tagged With: Black Lives Matter, Halifax city council, Policing

Council preview: Uber rules, climate plan, cooling-off period for bureaucrats

January 13, 2020 By Zane Woodford

Rules for Uber, a plan for climate change, and a cooling-off period for politicians and staff are all on the agenda for Halifax regional council’s meeting this week. The meeting, starting at 10am Tuesday, also includes an appeal hearing for a design review committee decision at 1pm and a public hearing on a Bedford Highway...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Featured, News, Subscribers only Tagged With: CAO Richard Butts, climate emergency, councillor cool-off, councillor Richard Zurawski, councillor Shawn Cleary, councillor Waye Mason, Design Review Committee, development Barrington Street, development Bedford Highway, HalifACT 2050, Halifax city council, lobbyist, Old South Suburb Heritage Conservation District Plan, Pathos Properties Inc, perivale + taylor, Police Chief Dan Kinsella, RCMP Chief Superintendent Janis Gray, review of policing, ride-hailing companies, taxi bylaw, Uber, vulnerable sector checks

Councillor Lindell Smith: Proud of? Not is. Will be proud…

As he begins the second half of his first term as a city councilor, Lindell Smith reflects on what's been accomplished. And what's still to do before he moves on. He is not, he says again/still, a career politician.

February 24, 2019 By Stephen Kimber

What are you most proud of, I asked District 8 Coun. Lindell Smith? He didn’t answer right away. We are seated at a quiet table in Alteregos, the Gottingen Street café he jokingly refers to as his “satellite office.” In fact, Halifax councillors don’t have offices of their own, so this is as close to...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Councillor Lindell Smith, Halifax city council, living wage, Racism, social policy lens

There’s other stuff happening besides cannabis legalization, but also cannabis legalization is happening

Morning File, Tuesday, October 16, 2018

October 16, 2018 By Tim Bousquet 7 Comments

News 1. Kasian Report on VG Redevelopment “Finally, the province has released a massive amount of information from a consulting firm hired to draw up a Master Plan to replace the Victoria General Hospital,” reports Jennifer Henderson: You can read what Kasian Architecture has recommended the proposed new facilities should look like and what services they […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: cannabis pricing, Councillor David Hendsbee, councillor Richard Zurawski, councillor Shawn Cleary, Councillor Stephen Adams, councillor Waye Mason, Dennis building, designated smoking areas, Halifax city council, Irving Oil refinery explosion, Kasian Architecture, Meghan Groff, Paul Armstrong, St. Paul's Church, VG replacement report

Cannabis will soon be legal. Just don’t smoke it, or grow it, or enjoy it

Partly out of legitimate health and human considerations, and partly out of a desire not to be seen to be blessing the dangerous idea otherwise ordinary people might occasionally enjoy a toke for the pure recreation of it, governments have been busy regulating and restricting everything about the business — as well as the pleasure — before making it legal.

June 17, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Talk about buzz kill. At its meeting Tuesday, Halifax city councilors will consider a staff report recommending ever more stringent controls around the cultivation and consumption of cannabis to make sure no one gets the notion there is anything remotely recreational or fun — certainly, definitively not fun— in the air because of the looming legalization...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, News, Subscribers only Tagged With: cannabis legislation, Halifax city council

Council to Armco: “Jump? How high, sir, how high…?” “Good dog…”

Last week, Halifax City Council again/still/always decided to re-re-re-write its planning bylaws on the fly for the greater good and increased profit of a private developer whose books it didn’t bother examining, let alone asking to glimpse once, maybe upside down on the desk, even just in passing...

May 27, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Last week, Halifax City Council again/still/always decided to re-re-re-write its planning bylaws on the fly for the greater good and increased profit of a private developer whose books it didn’t bother examining, let alone asking to glimpse once, maybe upside down on the desk, even just in passing. Jump? How high, sir, how high?… Good...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: Armco, Centre Plan exemptions, Halifax city council, Quinpool tower

United Way poverty report: “the system needs to change”

The irony, the report points out, is that most of those who live in poverty are actually employed, but 28 per cent earn well below a living wage. Their poverty — are you listening, Mr. Premier? — costs the province $1.5–2.2-billion a year.

April 15, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Halifax’s United Way has done it again. Traditionally, the do-good organization has been best known for turning your $5.4 million in yearly giving into a gamut of good grants to an alphabet soup of good-doing local organizations — from the Adsum Association for Women & Children to the Youth Voices of Nova Scotia Society —...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: addressing poverty, Halifax city council, United Way

City council, the developer, and the deal that isn’t quite

APL promises 10 affordable housing units in exchange for being allowed to add five storeys to its Willow Tree project. Who benefits? Hint: not the city...

March 25, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Halifax City Council can be — even at its best of times — confusing, contradictory, confounding. Last week, council was not, even by its own modest standards, at its best. Councillors were considering again/still/always a proposal from APL, an Armoyan development company, to erect a commercial-residential tower at the corner of Robie Street and Quinpool...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: APL Properties, Centre Plan, Councillor Sam Austin, councillor Shawn Cleary, Councillor Tim Outhit, Halifax city council, Jacob Boon, Joaquim Stroink, Robie and Quinpool tower, Willow Tree Tower

Happy Hermits in Caves Day: Morning File, Thursday, December 15, 2016

December 15, 2016 By Tim Bousquet 4 Comments

News 1. Weather There’s going to be weather today. This is a terrible time for people living on the streets. 2. NSGEU members reject offer Civil servants represented by the NSGEU voted 94 per cent to reject the provincial government’s contract offer. 3. Teachers back at table At 2:21pm yesterday, the province sent out a press release […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Allison Garber, Bill 148, climate change, Graham Steele, Halifax city council, inclusion, Joseph Kenneth Malone, labour negotiations, pedestrian struck, Richard Starr, Silver Don Cameron, Stephen McNeil, taxes

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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Recent posts

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  • Nova Scotia’s second busiest emergency department is dealing with record-breaking overcapacity June 30, 2022
  • What’s the “one small habit” that keeps a man organized? A wife June 30, 2022
  • Stuck on stick: clinging to the manual in an automatic world June 29, 2022
  • Halifax council votes to plan for Centennial Pool replacement, support universal basic income, and more June 28, 2022

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