Firing a staff member for racist comments is a start, but…

It’s clear the Houston government has more work to do when it comes to confronting racism in this province and repairing its relations with the Black community. The news late last week that a Tory staffer had been fired for making racist comments about Liberal MLA Angela Simmonds is interesting on a number of levels. […]

White lawyer Nash Brogan and Black lawyer Lyle Howe are each charged with professional misconduct, but the Barristers Society is treating Nash with kid gloves while throwing the book at Howe

What’s the difference between a 71-year-old white lawyer charged with professional misconduct and incompetence, and a 29-year-old Black lawyer accused of the same? Interesting question. The allegations against “Sydney’s senior lawyer,” 71-year-old Nash Terrance Brogan, seem, on the face of them, serious matters. According to a bill of particulars filed against him in August by […]

Our new premier seems comfortable in his own skin

It’s early and it doesn’t mean we’ll like where he leads us, but Tim Houston’s human responses to his early missteps are refreshing when compared to Angry Stephen McNeil and his successor, the Puppet Masters’ Script Reader. It’s a… start. I was listening — but distractedly — to the latest provincial COVID briefing last week, […]

Time for full disclosure on how many public dollars we really paid private lawyers to defend healthcare bullies

Tim Houston’s new government deserves credit for releasing a blacked-out 13-year-old document showing how much a previous government claimed to have spent on private lawyers in the Dr. Gabrielle Horne case. Trouble is that number isn’t new — or anywhere near complete. It’s time for actual full disclosure. Jean Laroche, the CBC’s veteran legislature reporter, […]

Canada voted, but your vote may not count… again

How likely do you think it will be that the Liberals bring in electoral reform in this term? Your first two guesses don’t count. So, one more federal election, one more failure to get the results we voted for, one more missed opportunity to change our archaic and unfair electoral system. You may remember the […]

Are you listening, Minister MacFarlane?

No one — not the overworked, understaffed social workers trying to cope with messes they didn’t make in a bureaucracy they can’t control, not the family court lawyers and judges tasked with enforcing the unreasonable, not the family and children’s advocates trying to change the unchanging, and certainly not the parents and children trapped inside […]

The RCMP’s ‘no apology’ speaks louder than words

What the Mounties are saying is simply this: Yes, street checks do disproportionately affect African Nova Scotians. But no, that’s not our fault. If you get street checked because you’re Black, well… that’s your problem. You’re Black. And so it goes. So, on the one hand, the RCMP “acknowledges the disproportionate harm that street checks […]

Does Tim Houston need to press reset on his reset?

Houston began his week in office pressing (yet another) reset on our healthcare mess. He ended it needing to press reset on his relations with the province’s African Nova Scotian community. So, let’s begin this history lesson somewhere in the murky middle muddle, way back in 1994 when a fresh-faced Liberal government led by Dr. […]

The candidates’ debate, take two

There must be a better way, and not just to conduct candidates’ debates. How would you change how elections are conducted? Last week’s skeptical — some might call it cynical — column about the provincial election leaders’ debate prompted a number of more thoughtful-than-I-deserved responses. Richard Starr, for example, agreed with my point there were […]

The premier who won’t get involved versus the sister who won’t give up

I can understand why Nicole Gnazdowsky might have become a “hostile individual” after no one in authority would tell her how and why her brother died in a workplace incident. I can’t understand why Premier Iain Rankin can claim he doesn’t have the authority to act in her case because there’s an election campaign underway. […]