942 posts by StephenKimber

Nova Scotia Justice Minister Brad Johns chairs a meeting of the Law Amendments Committee in Halifax on Monday, April 3, 2023. Let me recap. It’s confusing. But perhaps not really. Last year, Justice Minister Brad Johns, under pressure from the opposition and others to bring in legislation to ban the use of non-disclosure agreements — […]

Let’s begin with an instant replay of Tim Bousquet’s revealing Q&As with Tim Houston’s three freshly minted cabinet ministers last week. Well, not yet. First, a little background. On Thursday, September 14, Premier Houston announced what he called “historic changes” to his cabinet, including the appointment of newly elected Preston MLA Twila Grosse as the […]

On November 29, 2019, just five months into his new job, Halifax police chief Dan Kinsella stood before an audience of the city’s Black community at the Halifax Central Library, bemedaled in his dress blues, and offered an historic apology. Far too many times we have failed you. I acknowledge the community’s concerns that the actions […]

The federal government should reassess its policy on international students and consider a cap on a program that has seen “explosive growth,” putting pressure on rental markets and driving up costs, Housing and Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser said… “The reality is we’ve got temporary immigration programs that were never designed to see such explosive growth […]

Where to begin? Here. Again. CBC requested an interview with HRP to discuss the events of the protest.  HRP declined, citing the ongoing external review.  In last week’s column, I followed up on the CBC Atlantic Investigation Unit’s year-long struggle to wrest 11 years of internal discipline decisions from the Halifax Regional Police. The CBC […]

When the CBC’s Atlantic Investigative Unit wanted to understand better how police handle complaints from the public for a project called “Police and Public Trust,” it filed freedom-of-information requests asking all provincial police forces for 11 years of internal discipline decisions. Every force complied, except one. Halifax Regional Police declined to release any information at […]

The problem with trying to police truthiness in political debate is where should it begin and where will it end? Let’s begin with the Preston byelection. Voters there went to the polls on Tuesday, August 8. The Houston government had known since January 25, 2023 — when incumbent Liberal MLA Angela Simmonds announced she planned […]

When Alonzo Wright was appointed Director of Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) in December 2022, he gave his first interview to Matthew Byard, the Examiner’s Local Initiatives Reporter. Wright’s appointment as SIRT’s first director of African descent came at a fraught moment in the decade-long existence of the civilian police oversight body, whose […]

We are trying to balance the risks of under- and over-tightening monetary policy. If we don’t do enough now, we will likely have to do even more later. If we do too much, we risk making economic conditions unnecessarily painful for everybody… — Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem I am not now, nor ever […]

“Anyone who comes forward does so voluntarily, and we will be taking a trauma-informed approach when we’re speaking with them,” explained Cst. Shannon Herbert, an investigator with Operation Headwind, the RCMP’s investigation into allegations of sexual assault at the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville. Operation Headwind, she told a press conference last week, was […]