University, government, CEOs: let the students pay

So this is embarrassing. For whom? Well, it should be shame-making for everyone involved. Back in April, Dalhousie University’s Board of Governors approved a three per cent across-the-board tuition fee hike — even higher for students in engineering, pharmacy and agriculture — and squeezed faculty budgets to achieve its goal of a balanced budget. At […]

The Cat, the commitment and the costly complication

“Let me be clear,” Stephen McNeil said clearly last August even after Nova Star’s cash-sucking Yarmouth-Portland ferry had taken on sinking-level financial water. “As premier I’m committed to that link to the New England States… to a ferry service from Yarmouth.” Our question today. As Nova Star’s replacement — Bay Ferries high-speed Cat — sails […]

Message from Fidel

In the weeks following their arrests in September 1998, Gerardo Hernandez, René González, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González and Tony Guerrero — the Cuban Five — were as alone as they would ever be. They were being held in solitary confinement in the Miami Detention Center. Five of the comrades arrested with them were in the […]

Trinity Law School: ‘discomforting’ our comfortable bar society

The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is pondering appealing July’s Nova Scotia Court of Appeals decision green-lighting graduates of Trinity Western University Law School to ply their trade in Nova Scotia. But, in a post-decision interview, the society’s president almost seemed to be making the case for the conservative Christian university, which requires students to sign […]

Taxi sexual assaults: Is there too much focus on what women ‘can do’?

Last week, Halifax police outlined what women who take cabs “can do for their own personal safety.” The warnings follow a spike in reported sexual assaults in taxis: five in the last year, three in the last month. Women should: telephone, rather than hail a taxi so there’s a record of their call; note […]

Yarmouth ferry: We pay money, Portland makes money

Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan doesn’t want you to jump to conclusions. If he had his way, you wouldn’t know enough to jump to even the most preliminary conclusions. Unfortunately for him, Portland, Maine, requires Bay Ferries, operator of the Yarmouth-Portland ferry service, to submit a monthly accounting showing just how many passengers the Nova-Scotia-government-funded ferry […]

Do elections toll for us?

It is interesting — and perhaps instructive — to compare the McNeil government’s stealth, stroke-of-a-pen, done-and-dusted announcement it had clawed back a basic human right (a minimum wage) for teenaged hockey players with its aw-shucks, no-rush, we-just-want-what-you-want chorus for last week’s release of a study on twinning the province’s 100-series highways. The study itself was […]

Do teenage athletes playing for for-profit teams deserve the same protections as other workers?

Bobby Smith, majority owner of the Halifax Mooseheads, wasn’t available to talk to reporters last week about government changes to labour laws exempting his QMJHL team from paying its teenaged hockey players minimum wage, or vacation pay, or limiting the hours they work. No matter. The government’s press release helpfully quoted Smith, declaring teams like […]

We need to talk about Edward

Between playing a key role in putting down the Jacobite uprising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and being named Governor of Gibraltar in 1761, British Lieutenant General Edward Cornwallis served a three-year stint as the first Governor of Nova Scotia and, in the process, became the de-facto founder of Halifax, my hometown. For […]

Film Noir… film no… no film

It’s been a year since the Government of Nova Scotia’s surreal slashing of its film tax credit. Why did they do it? What did they hope to accomplish? How has it impacted production? Stephen Kimber investigates. “Mr. Speaker, the tax credit is important, and it is a powerful tool to our economy… The film industry […]