Lisa Banfield: criminal charges v discretion, compassion, common sense

Let’s start with this scenario. A woman with a decades-long history of having been brutalized and controlled by her common-law partner — a history that was known or should have been known to the police — is coerced into helping her partner transport ammunition for his cache of largely illegally obtained weapons. Does the RCMP […]

Premier on power rate hikes… the sounds of silence

For me, it was the silence that spoke most loudly last week. On Thursday, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board “approved significant rate increases for customers of the province’s monopoly power company, in apparent defiance of the provincial government,” as Globe and Mail reporter Matthew McClearn put it. Defiance… You will remember — how […]

Our ER health care crisis: going like hell in all directions, while getting nowhere fast

I have no doubt that Tim Houston genuinely wants to “fix” health care. He ran a provincial election campaign fixated on that singular if inexact goal. He has staked his political future, even his ultimate place in Nova Scotia political history on the claim that he alone can make health care healthy again. So why […]

Houston, we have an ER crisis …

… and accusing your opponents of “playing politics” won’t solve it So, Liberal leader, Zach Churchill wants Premier Tim Houston to recall the legislature to deal with the suddenly front-and-centre issue of why people are dying while they wait for care in our provincial emergency departments. And NDP leader Claudia Chender wants a public investigation […]

What we could do for the price of John Risley’s yacht

Quick now. How many Nova Scotians — earning Canada’s average industrial wage of $58,800 a year — could be hired for one full year for the reported asking price of John Risley’s one new, never-even sailed US$350-million luxury yacht? Don’t even bother with the currency conversion. If you guessed 5,992 with a little left over […]

Houston’s health care fix: another Hail Mary pass into a Grand Canyon of crises?

Nova Scotia’s healthcare system is hurtling past hell in a runaway, overcrowded, broken-down gurney. Some recent dispatches from its front lines: Consider this opening from a Canadian Press story last week. Nova Scotia’s health unions say long-standing staffing shortages in emergency rooms are a key reason two hospital managers last week warned that some patients […]

Making sense out of public opinion polling nonsense

Nobody asked me. But among those 605 Nova Scotians who are not me but who were asked in a Narrative Research telephone survey conducted between November 2 and November 28, 2002 — it apparently takes a long time these days to find 605 people who still have phones and will not only pick up their […]

Anyone but me. The crypto blame game plays on

“There’s a sucker born every minute.” — Phineas Taylor BarnumThe Prince of Humbugs I confess I don’t understand cryptocurrency. That’s not entirely true. When I was working with Jennifer Robertson to help write her 2022 memoir, Bitcoin Widow, I wasted far more hours than I will ever see again trying to understand this odd, ethereal, […]

Internal RCMP report raises questions about officers’ actions — but SIRT too

Last week’s seemingly out-of-sync release of an internal RCMP report into the shooting at the Onslow Firehall during April 2020’s mass shooting raises troubling questions. Some are more easily and satisfactorily answered than others. Let’s start with what happened on April 19, 2020, shortly after 10:20 a.m. outside the firehall located about 35 kilometres from […]

Union-chief spat just the tip of the troubles at Halifax Regional Police

“I have confidence in Chief Daniel Kinsella’s ability to lead the Halifax Regional Police…” Yes: 3.4 percent. No: 96.6 percent of the 83.7 percent of the Halifax Regional Police Association’s more than 600 members who voted in a recent union-organized poll answered “an overwhelming” no to the statement. No matter how you count, that’s a […]