Stephen McNeil declares health care victory… and runs

What better time to declare victory and slink off to bind your wounds than just before cocktail hour on the Friday afternoon before school March break and the eve of another Sunday nor’easter? (It’s no coincidence two of the top four Google News search terms modifying “Nova Scotia” Saturday morning were “weather and “storm;” “health […]

The great dentistry scandal of 2014, 2015… and counting

What to make of last week’s latest twists, turns, ins, outs and roundabouts in the never-ending root canal that is Dalhousie’s Great Dentistry Scandal of 2014, 2015… and counting? Who knows? The better answer, perhaps, is that (slightly) fewer social media posters and media pontificators seem so keen to rush to instant pre-judgment, conviction and […]

Government’s ‘we know best’ approach to race relations… again, still

It’s difficult to see Education Minister Karen Casey’s decision to cut off funding for the Council on African Canadian Education (CACE) as anything but vindictive. Let’s examine the history. In 1996, after high school race riots and a critical government advisory report recommended establishing an Africentric Learning Institute to improve black students’ education, the province […]

Health care unions, the government and the mess that will be

Really? Last year, the McNeil government passed the Health Authorities Act, ostensibly (and laudably) to streamline the province’s health care system, but also (and shabbily) to game that system. The legislation reduced the number of health districts from 10 to two, and the number of collective bargaining units from 50 to four. But the government’s […]

Harper’s diplomatically deaf, ideologically inspired foreign policy puts Canadians at risk

Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy sits trapped in Cairo limbo awaiting retrial next week on trumped-up charges he spread “false news” supporting Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, his Australian colleague, Peter Greste — who was convicted with Fahmy on the same charges last year — is home in Brisbane after being released Feb. 1 from what […]

What’s terror? Who’s a terrorist? And other aftermath questions…

It can’t happen here. It won’t happen here. It — almost — did. But what is “it”? And how do we protect ourselves against whatever it is? On Friday night, I was at Scotiabank Centre enjoying the Mooseheads-Shawinigan Cataractes Quebec Major Junior Hockey league game. During a commercial lull — the game was televised nationally as part […]

Students speak, government isn’t listening

Last week’s student march on Province House has become an annual rite of the winter season, not unlike its usual accompanying, storm-tossed February headline salad: Monday’s “Traffic Gridlock Hits Halifax,” Tuesday’s “Halifax Digging out from Biggest Snowfall” to Friday’s cheerless end-of-first-week-of-the-month news “Snowfall Amounts for February in Halifax Almost Equal to January Total.” Predictable. Depressing. […]

The Mayor’s markers: Are people happy, confident we can be better?

When you ask Halifax Mayor Mike Savage what he takes the “most pride in” from his first two years on the job, he doesn’t mention the two balanced budgets with no tax increases, the $350 million debt at the time of amalgamation now wrestled to $260 million “while the province has gone from a debt […]

Should Dal dentistry student be suspended … or thanked?

The irony is we might not know to be outraged if not for a man many of us are outraged at. We have a complicated relationship with those who blow whistles on bad behaviour: think Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning… and, now, Ryan Millet. Millet, a 29-year-old fourth-year Dalhousie University dental student, was one of 13 […]

Mike Savage Part 1: Not quite his father’s son

It’s hard to imagine a 30-minute conversation with former mayor Peter Kelly that could skip seamlessly: from the rebuilding Halifax Mooseheads; to a previous life as a backbench opposition MP (“the only less relevant position being a backbencher on the government side”); to the job of Halifax mayor (“I like it, sometimes more than I […]