The provincial government formalized its plans to dip into municipal affairs on Thursday, introducing bills to create a new agency on transportation and an executive panel on housing in Halifax Regional Municipality. The two new groups are part of Premier Tim Houston’s plan for affordable housing, announced last week, and were met with criticism from […]
Forest Confidential
An investigation into Nova Scotia’s biomass harvest data and how the numbers aren’t adding up
A few months ago I reviewed a film that has been circulating the province about the growing use of forest biomass as a form of so-called renewable energy. The film — Burned: Are Trees the New Coal? — reported on how the biomass industry sells itself as green by making two bogus claims: it uses […]
Halifax councillors should tell city staff to stop dithering and adopt a living wage policy already
Morning File, Monday, January 28, 2019
News 1. Blackface Last Monday, some Dalhousie students protested at the welcoming reception for incoming interim president Peter MacKinnon. As I noted Tuesday, the students were particularly riled over MacKinnon’s book, University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate & Dissent on Campus, which included a section that downplays and excuses the wearing of blackface while mischaracterizing and sidelining those who object […]
Major League Ambition
If the Port of Halifax is going to compete in a post-Panamex world, it will need a new, larger container terminal. But a Port Master Plan is delayed, and myriad difficulties are posed by potential new sites for a terminal. That leaves a massive expansion of the existing HalTerm in the South End.
Halifax has been a player and leader in the container terminal business for nearly half a century, having opened one of the first container terminals on North America’s east coast back in 1969 — Halterm in the city’s South End. Thirteen years later, in 1982, a second was opened in Fairview Cove in the North...
Power Play: The Port of Halifax has supplied emergency generators for six employees’ private homes
Oh, to have a generator and power when the lights go out. Six Halifax Port Authority officials, which based on photographic evidence, recently included HPA’S President and CEO Karen Oldfield (2015 salary $370,000), need not worry. They keep their lights on and houses warm using emergency generators provided by their employer, the Halifax Port Authority....
The development boom’s echo: filling in Halifax Harbour
In Halifax schools, children learn that the city has the second largest natural harbour in the world. It’s one of those motherhood statements that people repeat as a mantra when visitors come calling or businesses look at setting up shop here. So why are we filling it in? Since 2011, the Halifax Port Authority has...
Triggerfish warning: Morning File, Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Good news! You can now link to any part of a Morning File post by simply scrolling past the headline or sub-headline you’re interested in, then copying the URL from your browser and posting it on Facebook or Twitter (or anywhere else) to share. Or, to put it a different way, you can now link to […]