Progress isn’t easy, and sometimes it isn’t

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examine on April 23, 2018. “We need to go forward, but progress isn’t always a straight line or a smooth path.” Barack Obama victory speech, November 7, 2012 How to explain our current political whipsaw? You go to sleep one night knowing 6,000 delegates to this weekend’s federal […]

United Way poverty report: ‘the system needs to change’

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 16, 2018. Halifax’s United Way has done it again. Traditionally, the do-good organization has been best known for turning your $5.4 million in yearly giving into a gamut of good grants to an alphabet soup of good-doing local organizations — from the Adsum Association for Women & […]

The judge, the complaints and finding the balance between judicial independence and public confidence

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 9, 2018 “In the Matter of Complaints Against Judge Gregory Lenehan, made pursuant to the Provincial Court Act, R.S.N.S. 1989, c. 238 …” If nothing else, last week’s decision by the review committee looking into allegations of “misogynistic reasoning,” and “gender bias” by Nova Scotia Provincial […]

Peter Munk, Clairtone and the Nova Scotia disconnection

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on April 2, 2018. When Peter Munk died last week at the age of 90, the paeans of praise from the national media were so effusive as to seem over the top. The Globe and Mail’s3,300-word tributeappeared under the gushing headline: “The Extraordinary Life of a Business Legend, Philanthropist […]

City council, the developer, and the deal that isn’t quite

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 26, 2018. Halifax City Council can be — even at its best of times — confusing, contradictory, confounding. Last week, council was not, even by its own modest standards, at its best. Councillors were considering again/still/always a proposal from APL, an Armoyan development company, to erect a commercial-residential […]

Stephen McNeil, the offshore windfall and the royal ‘we’

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examine March 19,2018. Stephen McNeil says “we” — and by we the premier certainly doesn’t mean thee or me — “had a healthy discussion” about how to spend a could-be $250-million windfall to the Nova Scotia treasury, thanks to a one-time recalculation of offshore royalties, thanks to a one-time arbitration […]

When ‘freedom of speech’ is a code, not a value

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 12, 2018. What is it about Tories seeking their party’s leadership and their seemingly painful need to gymnast-twist the once liberal value of freedom of speech for their own illiberal purposes? Last spring when he was running to become federal Conservative Party leader, Andrew Scheer threatened to cut […]

The Horne case: mumble-mouthed nothings from mealy-mouthed nobodies

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 5, 2018. If you read only last week’s headlines — Appeal Court Slashes Damages Payout to Cardiologist Gabrielle Horne (Chronicle Herald); Halifax Cardiologist Sees Reduced Damages of $800K in Suit Against Health Authority: Nova Scotia Court of Appeal Rejects Appeal by Dr. Gabrielle Horne to also Sue […]

Memo to Stephen McNeil: beware teachers bearing frustration

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 26, 2018. Cast your mind back to October 25, 2016. The date will be significant. Before that day, Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government seemed to be in full control of its anti-public-sector-worker agenda. The executive of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union was preparing — […]

A jury of whose peers?

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on February 19, 2018. Let’s start with this. Any jury might have acquitted Gerald Stanley, the 56-year-old white Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old indigenous man, on his farm in August 2016. There are two competing narratives about what happened, and even more about the meaning […]