Education: the Byzantine, bizarre and just plain nonsensical

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 27, 2017.) If you’re looking for a flashing-neon-sign example of how Byzantine, bizarre and just plain nonsensical our province’s education bureaucracy can be, you might begin by considering last Wednesday’s non-decision by the South Shore Regional School Board not to revisit its carefully nuanced 2013 plan to […]

Stephen McNeil’s ‘right direction’ and his Chamber of Commerce cheerleaders

(Originally published in the Halifax Examiner February 21, 2017) If you missed it, I’m sure you weren’t alone. Let us first recall The Week that now, thankfully, was. First, of course, there was the emergency session of the legislature scheduled for last Monday night, but which was delayed a day by Snowmageddon #1. Our premier apparently […]

Teachers say no thanks. So Stephen McNeil says…

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on February 13, 2017. Premier Stephen McNeil had plenty of potential (Hobson’s) choices he could have chosen while he filled his weekend with “considerable soul searching.” How should the premier have responded after Nova Scotia’s 9,300 teachers said no thanks, no thanks and no thanks again to his government’s contract offer? This was […]

Schools, politics and the provincial thumb on the scale

Education Minister Karen Casey says reporters who would dare to even hint that politics — perish that pesky thought — might have influenced the government’s decision to replace Spryfield’s J.L. Ilsley High School should make that outrageous claim to the faces of the problem-plagued school’s teachers, staff, students and parents. Well, yes, they could do […]

The teachers’ dispute: just another Monday in Chaos

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on Monday, January 30, 2017.) It’s Monday. So it must be time for the latest zig in the zig-zaggy, twisty-turny, tortured tale of Stephen McNeil and the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. On Friday afternoon, the union announced its 9,300 members would resume their work-to-rule job action today […]

So what’s an un-built McMansion really worth? $119 million?

So… $119 million. That’s how much the Annapolis Group says the city owes it for refusing to bow down to its dream to pave over parts of the Blue Mountain Birch Cove wilderness area for what critics have described as “McMansions and McCondos.” Last week, the company gave notice it will file a lawsuit against […]

Police street check data (also) shows we need more journalists, more news organizations

On October 24, 2016, CBC Halifax journalist Phlis McGregor happened to hear an interview on As It Happens about a York University research study that analyzed two years of Ottawa police data. Between 2013 and 2015, the report said, police there pulled over nearly 82,000 drivers for mostly routine checks. The data showed Middle Eastern […]

CEO Compensation: Oops, you’ve been lapped again… and again

You’ve been lapped. While you were tossing out the tree and packing up the last of the Christmas ornaments for next year, that whirring whoosh of wind you heard was one more of Canada’s highest paid CEOs zipping past you, Flash-like, on the cash fast-track through 2017. By 11:47 a.m. on January 3, the first […]

Who is Joseph Boyden, and does the answer matter?

“A small part of me is indigenous, but it is a huge part of who I am.” — Joseph Boyden. How small? How about not at all? If that is true, what does it say about Joseph Boyden… author of a prize-winning trilogy of native-themed novels (Three Day Road, 2006 Writers Trust Nonfiction Prize; Through Black Spruce, […]

Stephen McNeil: are Nova Scotians just parking their votes and keeping score?

What a difference a week — or a poll — makes. On December 6, Corporate Research released its quarterly snapshot of the state of play in Nova Scotia politics, and it seemed to be more of the same-old, same-old, ho-hum, nothing-to-see-here-folks, move-along news story. CRA concluded the governing Nova Scotia Liberals remained our “preferred party” […]