The latest Gabrielle Horne travesty of justice

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers…” Dick the Butcher Shakespeare’s Henry V “Did you hear?” the email from my friend asked. “The hospital is appealing [the] Gabrielle Horne verdict? Honestly.” I should have expected as much. But I was hopeful. Naively, stupidly hopeful, it turns out. I’ve been following Dr. […]

League Misconduct

At 2:30 p.m. on July 4, 2016, Nova Scotia Minister of Labour Kelly Regan issued a news release. Athletes playing on Nova Scotia-based teams are exempt from parts of the Labour Standards Code… It was the Monday after the Canada Day long weekend, the beginning of our traditional summers-long political disengagement. This out-of-nowhere decision hadn’t […]

Berry Good

We could begin today’s globe-girdling adventure almost anywhere and at almost any time. In eastern Siberia, perhaps. Circa 1756. That’s when a Russian explorer and naturalist first identified the delectably healthful properties of a blue-ish, tart-tasting, strange-looking, oblong fruit from the lonicera caerulea plant. Or perhaps on Hokkaido, Japan’s most northern island, during the 1940s when […]

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 […]

Not so-strange bedfellows: the CTF and the CFIB and $8 billion in unpaid taxes

On September 10, the CBC revealed details of what the Canada Revenue Agency describes as an offshore tax haven “sham” created and orchestrated by one of this country’s most respected tax accounting and auditing firms. According to court documents, KPMG in 1999 developed a “product” designed to “target” those with a net worth of $10 […]

Canada’s ‘worst deadbeat dad’ responds

Vrege Armoyan describes the moment his 16-year marriage ended — it happened on Thursday, October 22, 2009 — as if it is unraveling before his eyes, in real time, instead of one in a series of unhappy personal-life footnotes, now nearly four years past. The story — in Vrege’s telling — begins six days earlier, […]

All pain, no gain

So, let us begin today’s wreck-onomics lesson in Athens where — as I write this — Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in the frenetic middle of executing an Olympics-worthy double-reverse cartwheel flip, trying to convince his countrymen to vote in favor of a European bailout deal they — and he — decisively rejected the […]

Spud Sabotage

Who would want to tamper with Prince Edward Island’s signature crop? And why? PEI potato farmers may not know the answer to those questions, but they did know how to respond when the story broke. Raise safety standards. “We’ll fix this.” Still, Islanders want to know: who did it and why? If you want to […]

Is that any way to start a discussion?

The United Way’s report on what it takes to live in Halifax, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s knee-jerk response to the report and the need for an open, honest debate… So what’s the difference between minimum wage and a living wage? In Halifax, about $10 an hour. That was the recent surprise-but-no-surprise conclusion […]