Eclectic Economic Council good; appointments stonewalling not so much
So Liberal leader Stephen McNeil has his knickers in a righteous knot because Darrell Dexter’s new 19-member economic advisory council includes a few of the premier’s union “buddies.”
I’m delighted this new volunteer group—set up to “provide advice to government on strategies and actions to grow the economy and act as a sounding board on government initiatives for labour force development and fiscal management as directed by the premier”—includes such an eclectic mix of advice-givers.
True, the advisory council does include more worker representation than your average Tory or Liberal appointed group. What’s wrong with that? There are also plenty of articulate voices of business, including organizations (Halifax Chamber of Commerce), entrepreneurs (Joe Shannon, Jim Spatz, Michael Donovan) and corporate bosses (Robert Patzelt of Scotia Investments Ltd.).
More significantly, this advisory board cuts a wide swath through Nova Scotia. There are representatives from the universities, community colleges, tourism, environmentalists, volunteers, women’s advocacy and even some young Halifax-based residents “who are inspired to make their city a better place to live, work and play.”
This is exactly the kind of group that should be sitting around a table together debating government economic initiatives and arguing over the future. Even better—faint hope—if they held their discussions in public.
As for McNeil’s specific complaints—that Dexter shouldn’t have appointed Building Trades Council president Cordell Cole because he was involved in last year’s election campaign fundraising scheme that turned out to be against the law, and should have disqualified two other union reps because they made “bullying” comments about small business—let’s take them one at a time.
Cole, like most appointees, is there because he represents an important economic interest group, in this case 14 unions and 12,000 skilled building tradespeople. They need to be at this table.
And public workers’ union reps fired broadsides at business groups that are advocating deep cuts in the number of government employees... uh, Stephen, what do you expect? On the flip side, we have the Chamber of Commerce—another group now represented in the advisory council—which attacked the government for raising the HST.
So it goes. Life.
While the Liberals—and the media—have their knickers knotted over this faux flap, a more important issue gets little attention. The NDP continues to refuse to provide the legislature’s all-party human resources committee with useful, vettable information on applicants for the province’s more than 130 agencies, boards and commission. Now there’s a scandal waiting to happen...
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
The 4th Estate: digitizing a remarkable decade in Nova Scotia
On the evening of April 16, 1969, the editorial staff of The People went about the usual business of putting together their still-less-than-year-old Halifax alternative biweekly newspaper. But, just before shipping it off to the printer, Managing Editor Nick Fillmore remembers, “we pulled off The People masthead, dad [Frank Fillmore] wrote an editorial explaining why Nova Scotia needed an independent paper, and The 4th Estate was born.”
That dramatic “little scheme” not only ended a simmering dispute among the five owners of the paper—Fillmore says the three non-family owners wanted to make money “so they tried to influence us to tone down the content”—but the first issue of The 4th Estate also marked the beginning of one of the most remarkable decades in Nova Scotia’s long and storied journalism history. (Full disclosure: I was a contributor to the paper.)
This afternoon, Libraries Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Archives and Cape Breton’s Beaton Institute will launch “Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers: An Online Resource,” a project that has so far digitized 18 provincial newspapers, ranging from the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser (1769) to the Micmac News (1991).
And, of course, The 4th Estate.
During its nine-year run, the feisty little tabloid challenged—and often bettered—its establishment rivals, the Chronicle-Herald and Mail-Star, which the Fillmores called “the Old Women of Argyle Street.” Fillmore recalls an incident when “one well-known but angry Herald journalist walked into my office with the story about the incompetence in the construction of the Glace Bay heavy water plant—a story of national importance. I was told the Herald wouldn't publish it because it would reflect poorly on Nova Scotians.”
The 4th Estate, which Nick says brought together “my father's social conscience and my journalism skills,” had no such compunctions. It campaigned against slum landlords—threatening to publish side-by-side photos of slums and their owners' private residences—and laws that sent poor people to jail for debt or allowed the power company to shut off their electricity.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Fillmore believes Halifax could still use a 4th Estate-style newspaper. “Independent media, where policies are not dictated by corporate owners and where advertising is not heavily relied on, are needed across the country,” he says.
And so are resources like the newspaper digitization project, which showcase our history. But, while organizers have done a remarkable job of digitizing 19,000 newspaper pages with a budget of just $24,000, there’s no money left to continue the work, which is estimated to cost about $150,000. “There are many, many newspapers left to do,” says Michael Colborne, one of the organizers, “and with every passing year their condition deteriorates.”
***
To see Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers: An Online Resource,” visit: http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/new.asp.
And for more from my email interview with Nick Fillmore, check out this link.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
The tragedy of Trevor Zinck’s public meltdown
I’ve only met Trevor Zinck once. Back in 2007 when I was working on a story about the far-too-many children who fall through the cracks of our child welfare system and he was a fresh-faced NDP MLA, we both attended a meeting examining other, better child welfare models. Afterward, Zinck handed me his card, offered his assistance. He seemed earnest, and genuinely concerned.
How to square that Trevor Zinck with the off-the-rails unnatural disaster he has become this past month? The Trevor Zinck who allegedly played so fast and loose with his MLA expenses he got kicked out of the NDP caucus? The Trevor Zinck who stands accused of running up a $10,000 gambling debt on the credit card of a disabled friend for whom he was once a care-giver? The Trevor Zinck who now blames everyone else for his troubles?
The simple, and most likely answer is that Zinck’s “problems” with alcohol and gambling—which he has publicly acknowledged in an offhanded way but has clearly not yet accepted as serious, or seemingly done anything to deal with—have warped his political and personal judgments.
Without getting all-Dr.-Phil, it seems obvious Trevor Zinck is in denial.
When he got kicked out of the caucus, for example, Zinck dismissed concerns about his own alleged failure to pay routine bills for which he’d already been reimbursed. If there’d been a problem, he argued, it was just bookkeeping. And he’d taken care of it. He lashed out at Darrell Dexter, accusing the premier of plotting to oust him as a way to scare other unidentified NDP MLAs from voting against the government’s upcoming budget. And he claimed House Speaker Charlie Parker’s decision to ask the auditor general to look into his expenses was partisan and “unparliamentary.”
When his former friend reluctantly went public about Zinck’s alleged failure to repay the credit card debt, Zinck claimed the NDP put the man’s family up to it. The family denied the allegation.
Zinck’s most recent claim that all these unlikely conspiracies are somehow intended to undermine what he claims is widespread public support for him among his constituents appears—to be generous—delusional.
In the end, there are two issues here.
The first, of course, is the public issue of Trevor Zinck’s ability—and legitimacy—to continue as an MLA. Let’s leave that for today.
The larger, sadder and more human issue is that Trevor Zinck needs help. The tragedy is that he still doesn’t—or won’t—recognize just how much. Let’s hope, for his sake, that that changes. Before it’s too late.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Convention centre secrecy deja vu all over again
Frankly, I’m not sure what I think of the controversy over whether to build a new convention centre in downtown Halifax.
Those who support it claim that, during the past three years, we’ve lost 70 conventions—and the economic benefits they bring—because the current World Trade and Convention Centre is too small to attract the kind of conventions we need.
Conventions, proponents argue, are tourism magnets. “You're bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the market,” Trade Centre President Scott Ferguson told The Coast last week, for example. “They spend three times more than the average tourist does… They stay and they travel the province and they go back and they talk about what a wonderful place Halifax is, and they come back again.”
But the proposed 120,000-square-ft. complex on the former sites of the Halifax Herald and Midtown Tavern—which would also include an 18-storey hotel and 14-storey office tower—will require at least $100 million from taxpayers.
Forget for the moment the predictable complaints from those who worry the project’s twin towers will block iconic views from Citadel Hill. As important as that debate may be, let’s save it for another day and simply look at the proposal on its business merits.
Uh…
The problem is that we can’t.
We’re told there have been four consultants’ reports that all say the proposal makes sense. But we can’t see the details, or the devil in them. Before they were released in response to a freedom of information request from convention centre opponents, officials blacked out virtually every page—certainly every important piece of information—from each one of the reports.
And what about those 70 conventions supporters claim we “lost” in the last three years? Bev Miller of the Peninsula South Community Association, a convention centre opponent, questions those numbers. Toronto’s Convention Centre only hosts a total of about 60 conventions a year, she points out. “Simple arithmetic” suggests Halifax’s dramatic lost-conventions claim is “very unlikely.”
Which means…?
We’ve been down this road before.
Remember the Commonwealth Games fiasco?
How about the MLA expenses scandal?
Secrecy usually means you’re doing something you don’t want people to know about.
Mayor Peter Kelly calls supporting the convention centre a “no brainer.
We need to not lose focus and make sure the place gets built,” he told Metro last month.
There may indeed be a solid business case for investing $100 million of taxpayers’ dollars in a new convention centre. But it’s not good enough to say, Trust us. Show us the numbers. Be transparent.
And let us be the judge of what makes sense.
See also: Tim Bousquet's excellent piece on the convention centre issue in The Coast.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Coast story Atlantic Journalism Award finalist
Stephen Kimber's cover feature for the June 9, 2009th issue of The Coast—"Who is Premier Darrell Dexter?"—has been selected as one of the finalists for this year's Atlantic Journalism Awards.
The Dexter story is up against two other stories—Tim Bousquet's "Doolittle, Darwin and the Deeply Dumb" from The Coast and Andrew McGilligan's "Long Journey's Home" in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal—in the Print Feature category. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Halifax on May 8.
Excerpt's from the entry submission explaining the background to the Dexter story:
"From During the winter of 2009, it became increasingly apparent Nova Scotians would voting in a spring general election, and that Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats would likely form the next provincial government. Such an outcome—unthinkable a generation ago—could mark an historic turning point in Nova Scotia politics.
How should The Coast cover these developments? Unlike the dailies or other media, we don’t have the luxury—in the print edition at least—of providing continuing coverage of events as they unfold. We had to decide on the central story of the election and write it.
We decided that story was Darrell Dexter. Who is he? Where does he come from? What makes him tick? What kind of government was he likely to lead?
While Nova Scotians had seen Dexter in action in the legislature over the previous decade, few were aware of more than the vaguest outlines of his personal history or the path he had taken to party and political power.
Our feature profile was an attempt to understand the man who could become premier by weaving together his personal story with the story of the party’s rise, and showing how the party had affected Dexter and Dexter has affected the party."
I’ll admit I was taken aback when I looked at the cover of The Coast on June 9 to see a title that assumed Dexter would win the election the next week," Kimber recalled. "Shades of Dewey! But the paper’s editors were braver—and more prescient—than me. Dexter won and, even seven months later, I believe our story provides useful insights into the mind of the province’s 27th premier."
Kimber is also a finalist for this year's Atlantic Book Awards. His book, IWK, is up for the Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction. The Atlantic Book Awards will be presented April 14 at a ceremony in Dartmouth.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.
Buy his books at Amazon.