Bobbleheaded Zach joins the public accounts follies

Education Minister Zach Churchill was just filling in on the public accounts committee last week, filling in Liberal interest spin in the usual please-the-premier way. And so it went. Funny, but… The column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 4, 2019. I’m almost certain Nova Scotia Education Minister Zach Churchill is not really a Bobblehead. He was just […]

Councillor Lindell Smith: Not is proud of… Will be proud of…

As he begins the second half of his first term as a city councilor, Lindell Smith reflects on what’s been accomplished. And what’s still to do before he moves on. He is not, he says again/still, a career politician. This column first appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 25, 2019. What are you most proud […]

Alex Richman: R.I.P.

When Alex Richman’s son “did not survive” the 1991 crash of US Air Flight 1493, his and his wife’s grief turned to frustration, then anger and finally resolve as they set out to make flight safer for all of us. This column first appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 18, 2019 “Alex was laid to rest beside his son David in Shaarey Zedek Cemetery, Winnipeg […]

The Cat can’t come back… to Portland

But the money-sucking ferry service will continue to suck Nova Scotia tax dollars. That’s good news for columnists, bad news for taxpayers. The good news for need-to-always-be-even-more-shocked-and-yet-more-appalled columnists is that the Yarmouth ferry is the gift that keeps on giving. The bad news for taxpayers is that it is also the ferry that keeps on […]

Now that the Fangless Five have become the Insensate Seven, it’s time for…?

Stephen McNeil’s Liberals have made a mockery of the notion of public accountability. So now the opposition parties need to step up and do their — and our — job. The column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 4, 2019. Stephen McNeil’s Liberals have made a mockery of the notion of public accountability. So […]

Encounter re-encountered, with lessons for today

In 1970, a dozen outside experts came to Halifax for a week to turn the city ‘upside down.’ Last week, a local group played excerpts from ‘Encounter on Urban Environment,’ the NFB’s documentary on that cataclysmic week in Halifax, and discussed whether it’s time for another upside-downing. This column first appeared in the Halifax Examiner January 28, 2019. I […]

Health minister promises to fix long-term care, but offers no money to actually fix it

Last week’s expert-panel report into the province’s flat-lining long-term care system offered a clarion call for the government to finally fix our ailing long-term care system. But the panel didn’t provide a clear, costed pathway to do that, in part because the government didn’t provide it with enough useful data about the existing problems and […]

The Fang-less Five, the McNeil government and (un)accountability

In his own Trumpian, alternate-fact world, MLA Gordon Wilson wants us to believe the public accounts committee can’t venture beyond the narrow confines of published auditor general’s reports when examining public spending because… well, that would be against the law. Time for Wilson to re-read the “law.” This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner […]

Hard conversations: why was ‘fantastic principal’ Lamar Eason suspended from his job?

“People don’t like to talk about race, culture, bias,” Bayview Community School principal Lamar Eason explains, adding elliptically: “Doing your job can lead to questioning the people employing you. Understandably, people get defensive. But [race relations officers] are not there just to support schools; we’re also there to support students and their families. There can […]

Gerald Regan and the legacy of our #MeToo moment

It isn’t the jury’s verdict from 1998 we should be remembering, but the fact the RCMP and prosecutors finally chose to believe women over one of the country’s most powerful political men. And, more important, that women — lots of them — stood up for other women, and said ‘me too’ before #MeToo. This column […]