News 1. Prisoners and the vote Reports El Jones: On Monday, Canadians voted in the federal election. Voting is a right for all Canadians, and this includes people who are incarcerated. Despite being able to vote, prisoners report that they experienced barriers to casting their ballot. Prisoners in the Atlantic Institution, a federal men’s maximum […]
Government moves slowly, except when it moves lightning fast
Morning File, Friday, October 4, 2019
News 1. Twenty years after the Marshall decision, DFO still has no agreement with First Nations communities over fishing management It’s been twenty years since the Marshall decision (in which the Supreme Court of Canada found that Donald Marshall Jr. had a treaty right to fish for eels out of season) and the Department of […]
A bad day for people on bikes
Morning File, Thursday, July 25, 2019
News 1. Two collisions send two cyclists to hospital A pick-up truck driver who hit a cyclist on Waverley Road Wednesday morning has been charged with “Vehicle Passing a Bicycle while Travelling on Right When There is Less than 1 Metre between the Vehicle and Cyclist” according to the RCMP. The cyclist was taken to […]
Anthony Leblanc rolls into to town and all the public consultation about Shannon Park is thrown out the window
Morning File, Monday, April 1, 2019
News 1. Street checks Saturday, young people in Halifax’s Black community led a conversation at the North Library about Scot Wortley’s report on street checks and the effects of street checks on them. After the conversation, there was a march from the library to the police station (and then on to Province House) demanding an […]
More Liberal cowardice
Morning File, Friday, February 1, 2019
News 1. Liberal cowards, pt. 2 Yesterday, I castigated as “craven fools” the five Liberals on the Public Accounts Committee — Gordon Wilson, Suzanne Lohnes-Croft, Ben Jessome, Brendan Maguire, and Hugh MacKay — for their spinelessness in limiting debate at the committee in order to (they think) gain a short-term PR advantage of controlling the public message. […]
All in All It’s Just Another Slick in the Harbour
Morning File, Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Hi, I’m Chris Benjamin, today’s guest writer. I’m a journalist as well as a writer and editor of books — fiction and non-fiction — and the managing editor of Atlantic Books Today Magazine. Environment and social justice are my beats. News 1. Oil spills, past and present The Canadian Coast Guard is investigating what appears to […]
The world’s top expert on deep sea drilling disasters worries about “the relatively high likelihoods” of a blowout at BP’s Scotian Shelf operation
Morning File, Thursday, May 10, 2018
News 1. Blowout Antonia Juhasz, who is an energy analyst, author, and investigative journalist specializing in oil, has taken an interest in Nova Scotia’s offshore, and so asked Robert Bea to have a look at the regulatory approval for BP’s drilling on the Scotian Shelf. Bea was the right person for Juhasz to ask. Bea […]
Fifteen cops showed up to arrest a teenager for using the internet
Morning File, Tuesday, April 17, 2018
1. Fifteen cops showed up to arrest a teenager for using the internet CBC reporter Jack Julian interviewed the 19 year old who was arrested in the mischaracterized “data breach” of the province’s Freedom of Information website. Julian’s article is a great piece of reporting; it is well-written, sensitive, informative, and enraging. If police statements about […]
Now that we’ve taken a bath on the convention centre, let’s do a stadium
Morning File, Monday, April 16, 2018
1. The Securities windfall “A $77.1 million windfall helps balance the books in this year’s provincial budget,” reports Jennifer Henderson: That’s the amount the federal government is paying Nova Scotia as incentive to disband the provincial Security Commission and join a national securities regulator. But that one-time payment comes at the cost of $15 million […]
Two-thousand dead, and we’ve learned no lessons from the Explosion: Morning File, Monday, December 4, 2017
News 1. The Mulroney Institute, St. Francis Xavier University, and the honorary arms dealers Writes Stephen Kimber: The former prime minister has had many “good” friends, many of whom pop up in leaks of information about tax havens. Many of those same names — surprise — also figure prominently in helping underwrite the soon-to-be Mulroney Institute. […]