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 […]

Broten report sings from the Common Book of Corporate Prayer

We shouldn’t be surprised. Not after federal finance minister Joe Oliver last week made the case — without embarrassment — Ottawa didn’t need to do an independent analysis of the cost-benefits of a $550 million tax credit for small business because the self-interested lobby group Canadian Federation of Independent Business told him it was a […]

AIMS aims to cover its…

“The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax has not responded to questions.” That nugget was nested in the last line, last paragraph of a Globe and Mail story last week about the Harper government’s efforts to “intimidate, muzzle and silence its critics.” Ottawa is spending $13.4 million so its tax auditors can descend, lotus-like, […]

Northern Pulp, the Sobeys and the lessons unlearned

Nova Scotia is a small, interconnected, even inbred political, economic and social ecosystem. So it was intriguing last month to hear former Empire CEO Paul Sobey publicly rail against the dense “haze of emissions” spewing forth daily from Pictou County’s Northern Pulp mill, stinking up the community in which he lives and in which his […]

No success like failure… Rob Bennett and NSP

One of the enduring myths among those who bow down to the gods of the marketplace is that someone who screws up in the private sector—unlike the cosseted public sphere—will suffer inevitable, inevitably dire consequences for failure. While there may be truth to that at the lower rungs of the corporate ladder, those at the […]

Working it out

Commerce grads says mandatory work terms give them a jump on career success. (From the July-August 2012 issue of Atlantic Business Magazine.) It is a sweetly sunny late May day in Halifax, the morning after yet another night before on the streets of Montreal where police arrested 518 students in another night of demonstrations against […]

Debt? What debt?

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 […]

Howling at the Moon

Why did Nova Scotia business wail wolf over first contract legislation? On Dec. 14, 2011, Sobeys announced it was swallowing whole every one of Shell Canada’s 250 service stations east of Ontario. No big deal. The day before, Empire, which controls the Canadian super-sized supermarket chain, had reported a quarterly profit of $78.1 million. Sobeys […]

John Risley responds to my Occupy column

John Risley, the president of Clearwater Fine Foods and a columnist for Atlantic Business Magazine, says I’ve got it all wrong when it comes to the Occupy Movement. “In the previous issue of Atlantic Business Magazine,” Risley writes, “my fellow columnist — Stephen Kimber — attempted to explain the Occupy movement. Unfortunately he got it […]

Sobeys CEO resigns suddenly

Sobeys this week made what the business website allnovascotia.com called a “shock announcement.” Its CEO Bill McEwan will be stepping down this spring for unspecified “health” reasons. Back in 2003, shortly after he assumed the reigns of the Nova Scotia-based supermarket giant, I wrote this profile of McEwan for the Globe and Mail’s Report on […]