Why is Peter MacKay still in the federal cabinet? I mean, really. Let us traipse through the potato patch of what should have been the meteoric down and down, and down some more career trajectory of our man in Ottawa, a man most famous for his love life, his entitled-to-his-entitlements adventures on our dime and […]
Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
- 06/18/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Premier Darrell Dexter is right that the province’s Electoral Boundaries Commission was wrong to ignore its mandate to eliminate designated minority ridings. But his government was wrong to force that mandate on the commission in the first place. Let’s rewind. There’s a legal requirement that an electoral boundaries commission be established every so often to […]
- 06/11/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Last week’s surprise cabinet shuffle raises are all sorts of intriguing questions. For starters, did Finance Minister Graham Steele jump, or was he pushed? If he jumped, was it because of a tiff with Premier Darrell Dexter over the province’s fiscal future? Does Steele want Dexter’s job? If so, is quitting just a John-Turner/Jean-Chretien/Paul-Martin/Harry-Houdini return-to-win-another-day […]
- 06/04/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
“People haven’t turned away from public affairs,” Mike Savage rightly told reporters recently as he unveiled the first official plank in his platform to become mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality. “They’ve been turned away by secrecy, by lack of true accountability, by political self-interest and by lip service to real, honest and open public […]
- 05/28/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
The news that senior executives at Emera and its wholly owned, profit-protected subsidiary, Nova Scotia Power, topped their million-plus, one-per-center-club-members-in-good-standing pay packets with raises from 20 to 30 per cent last year prompts all sorts of intriguing questions. For starters, how many of the company’s secretaries sat on the compensation committee? The short answer: none. […]
- 05/14/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
One hopes there was more to last week’s Great Yellow Jesus T-Shirt Fooforaw than we now know. One hopes. Otherwise… What we do know is that William Swinimer, 19, a Grade 12 student at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, a born-again Christian and member of the Jesus the Good Shepherd Pentecostal Church in […]
- 05/07/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Last week’s to-the-edge-of-the-ledge, past-the-last-minute contract settlement between Capital Health and its 3,600 health workers raises all sorts of difficult but intriguing questions. The first, and most immediate, of course, is could the disruption—even without an actual strike, the anticipation cancelled 560 elective surgeries and emptied 172 beds—have been avoided? The short answer is probably not. […]
- 04/30/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Is it time for another “Encounter on the Urban Environment”? In late February 1970, Nova Scotia’s Voluntary Planning Board invited a dozen disparate international experts—a black community leader, an industrialist, a labour leader, a journalist, an economist, an urban planner, etc.—to come to Halifax for a week-long “experiment utterly new to the western hemisphere.” […]
- 04/23/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Why don’t we cut to the chase? Is it time to eliminate elected school boards and let the provincial government shoulder real responsibility/blame/credit for how our schools are operated/paid for? I ask, in part, because of last week’s dust-up between the Chignecto-Central school board and Premier Darrell Dexter and Education Minister Ramona Jennex. Earlier this […]
- 04/16/2012
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
The thing I don’t understand—one of many actually, but let’s start with this one—is whatever happened to the debt? Whenever governments decide to put us on short rations—as the NDP did after it came to power in 2009, as the federal Liberals did in the 1990s—they do their best to frighten us into submission with […]
- 04/09/2012
- StephenKimber
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STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax and co-founder of its MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of two novels and eight non-fiction books. Buy his books
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