Last year it was a propaganda blitz. For several weeks in the spring of 2020, Atlantic Gold, which operates an open pit gold mine in Moose River in the Halifax Regional Municipality and wants to open three more along the Eastern Shore, bombarded people in Nova Scotia with its PR. Atlantic Gold’s owner, Australia’s St...
Good intentions, abysmal execution, lost opportunity
Premier Stephen McNeil was right to apologize for our justice system's long history of racism, but he was wrong in his father-knows-best response to fixing it. It has been ever thus.
It was one of those moments when seemingly good intentions smacked up against abysmal execution and resulted in a lost opportunity. Last week on his way out the power door, Premier Stephen McNeil not only offered a fulsome wea culpa apology to the province’s Black and Indigenous communities for our long and ongoing history of […]
The connections of Nova Scotia universities to slavery and why it matters
Morning File, Friday, February 14, 2020
News 1. Elmsdale Lumber Elmsdale Lumber used to sell most of its bark and chips to Northern Pulp, but now that the mill has closed, Elmsdale is finding new markets, reports Jennifer Henderson. “We will survive” says owner Robin Wilber, but he sees the new markets as only a short-term fix until, he says, the […]
Maritime Launch Services and its private/public servants
One government bureaucrat sent a nasty email to a CBC reporter. Others had rude things to say about the Halifax Examiner. And Stephen McNeil met with MLS and it Ukrainian "partners" even though they aren't registered as lobbyists.
It’s not the first time I’ve waded through many hundreds of pages of correspondence released by a government under a FOIPOP (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy) request, but it is the first time that reading the correspondence made me feel slightly queasy, like a voyeur witnessing unhealthy relationships developing between uncritical and subservient […]
Glen Assoun will receive early compensation
Morning File, Friday, September 13, 2019
News 1. Glen Assoun will receive early compensation “The federal and Nova Scotia governments are making an initial payment to Glen Assoun, a man who spent 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder,” reports Michael Gorman for the CBC: Nova Scotia Justice Minister Mark Furey told reporters Thursday the payment would be made […]
McNeil government: if John Perkins doesn’t like being wrestled to the floor at a public meeting, he can file a complaint
If you aren’t keen on police roughing you up and cuffing you at a pubic meeting, or corporations dialing up the Mounties to act as bouncers, then go file a complaint with one of two watchdogs that investigate actions by RCMP officers. That’s the identical response which Premier Stephen McNeil, Justice Minister Mark Furey, and […]
The Northern Pulp Mill pollution plan may be an economic disaster in the making: Morning File, Wednesday, February 14, 2018
1. Dirty Dealing, part 2 Right now, as we publish, Frances Martin, the Deputy Minister of the Department of the Environment, is appearing before the legislature’s Public Accounts committee, where she is being asked about the Environmental Assessment for Northern Pulp Mill’s plan to discharge mill effluent into the Northumberland Strait. The Northumberland Strait is […]