With friends like Jamie Baillie, bus driver don't need enemies

So let me see if I have this right. When workers are at their most vulnerable—when, for example, they’ve decided to join a union and are attempting to negotiate a first contract with a more powerful, perhaps hostile employer—Jamie Baillie is a champion of free collective bargaining. Let the chips fall where they may… so […]

Sobeys CEO resigns suddenly

Sobeys this week made what the business website allnovascotia.com called a “shock announcement.” Its CEO Bill McEwan will be stepping down this spring for unspecified “health” reasons. Back in 2003, shortly after he assumed the reigns of the Nova Scotia-based supermarket giant, I wrote this profile of McEwan for the Globe and Mail’s Report on […]

Metro Transit negotiations require talking… and leadership

Whatever else one can say about the rights-wrongs of the current Metro Transit strike, it is clear city negotiators were never interested in negotiating with its 760 bus drivers, ferry operators and support staff. The contract between Metro Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Union expired Sept 1. There was just one face-to-face session—essentially a presentation […]

Me, the CBC and the CTF

Why would the Canadian Taxpayers Federation make a mountain out of the minuscule? Why indeed? So the sleuths at the Canadian (sic) Taxpayers Federation have uncovered the startling (to me, at least) fact I’m “on the CBC payroll.” They appear to believe this is the only possible explanation why I—and other members of the Friends […]

How not to end up up with the mayor we least want

Perhaps Halifax should adopt a kinder, gentler version of the American cage match, survival-of-the-sleaziest primary system to winnow our choices for mayor. Or maybe we need to consider some variation of the NDP’s upcoming advance preferential leadership balloting system to determine who we most—and least—want as next super mayor of our supercity. Consider. Four candidates […]

Why can’t we have Viola Desmond day and…?

As Canada Post prepares issue a new stamp next month to celebrate the life of Viola Desmond, our own government seems about to quietly take a pass on the opportunity to honour the Halifax woman whose personal courage remains a symbolic inspiration in the fight for human rights in Canada. In 1946—nine years before Rosa […]

City council stumbles… again, always

The lesson from last week’s reversal of council’s decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra school to a private developer? Even when our councillors finally, belatedly get it right, they bungle the process so badly everyone walks away more than slightly soiled and embarrassed by the whole exercise. In December, over angry objections of […]

The Occupy Movement for business… in 15 minutes, more or less

My assignment: “Explain the Occupy Wherever Movement in 15 Minutes.” The occasion was a recent luncheon at the Halifax Club to mark Global Ivey Day, an annual opportunity for alumni of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business to come together to celebrate their Iveyness. I’d been invited as the post-lunch speaker, even […]

Progress? Who's whining now?

On Wednesday, local radio personality Bobby Mac launched a new Facebook group “for those of us who are tired of those whining people who don’t want any progress in this great city of Halifax.” Its name? SCREW THE VIEW!! By Saturday morning, STV had 163 members. “We are tired of the groups that stop progress […]

Not "Africville all over again"… not yet

Rev. Rhonda Britten may have been guilty of hyperbole when she compared last week’s city council decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra School to a local developer to “the rape… of a community… Africville all over again!” But she is not entirely canary-in-the-coal-mine wrong. In 2009, Halifax Regional School Board—over the ongoing objections of […]