Council to Armco: ‘Jump? How high, sir, how high…?’ ‘Good dog…’

This column was first published in the Halifax Examiner May 28, 2018. Last week, Halifax City Council again/still/always decided to re-re-re-write its planning bylaws on the fly for the greater good and increased profit of a private developer whose books it didn’t bother examining, let alone asking to glimpse once, maybe upside down on […]

Thanks Stephen, Darrell, Rodney, et al… for ‘The Donald’?

If you want to understand the un-understandable appeal of Donald Trump, you could do worse than begin with Stephen McNeil. That is not as far-fetched as it might initially seem. We are not talking here about Stephen McNeil, the individual, but Stephen McNeil, the symbolic end result of far too many years of all-too-usual politics […]

Anonymous bullies

“Transparency,” explains the computer-altered voice belonging to the face hidden behind the mustachioed, comic-book smirk mask, “is of the utmost importance.” Irony, it would appear, is lost on Anonymous, the self-anointed Secret Santa sheriffs of the Internet netherworld. Late last week, Anonymous Maritimes, an apparent branch plant of the leader-less worldwide network of you-are-one-if-you-say-you-are Internet […]

Where’s Leo? … and other notes from the health care week that was

I suppose if the Harper government can commit us to a war without borders — Iraq, maybe Syria — or actual end goals on the strength of a few hours of debate in the House of Commons on a Monday night in October, we should be grateful Stephen McNeil took a full week to ram […]

NSP and the convention centre: failures to communicate

What we have here, suggested Nova Scotia Power President and CEO Bob Hanf, is a failure to communicate. Lack of manpower? Don’t worry. Storm-unhardened infrastructure? Be happy. Despite close to a week to prepare for the Hurricane Arthur that had whooshed into a post-tropical shell of itself by the time it made landfall, NSP’s communications […]

Efficiency Nova Scotia, political jiggery pokery and your power bills

Could Stephen McNeil’s read-my-lips election promise to “save you $46 million per year” on your power bills become his defining, Darrell-Dexter-like, no-new-taxes/no-program-cuts, dead-on-the-doorstep electoral moment? During last year’s election campaign, the Liberals’ cross-their-heart pledge was straightforwardly specific: if you elect us, we will eliminate the efficiency tax on your electricity bill and force Nova Scotia […]

How much does Chris Huskilson’s secretary make?

Forget for the moment whether last week’s Emera executive bonuses come out of your right pocket or your left. And don’t probe too deeply into whether the supposed wall between the cash shoveled into the bank accounts of Emera executives for the work they do for our own Nova Scotia Power electricity utility and the […]

We need an electricity review. This isn’t it…

So Energy Minister Andrew Younger is launching a year-long review of Nova Scotia’s electricity system. Although energy supply and demand are supposedly both on the table, Younger has already made clear his obsession with cutting power rates, not reducing energy demand. During the last election campaign, Younger offered two concrete proposals the Liberals claimed would […]

Will time tell on Stephen McNeil's new government?

One of the interesting early smoke signals from the new Liberal government is the one they aren’t sending — that the sky is falling. The Liberals did not, as the previous NDP government did, order up an immediate full-blown independent report on the state of the province’s finances, a report whose conclusions changed the course […]

Welcome, Mr. Premier. And good luck…

Stephen McNeil doesn’t even have the key to the executive washroom — premier’s desk, top left-hand drawer — and his administration-in-eager-anticipation is already being sideswiped by economic events over which it has little control and less influence. Just two days after his Liberals were swept into office on an electoral toss-those-rascals-out-and-let’s-see-what-these-rascals-will-do roll of the dice, […]