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 […]

Corporate charity: who is it good for? Them…

“Hi there,” began the breathlessly chatty, early February email from someone named Emily from something called Veritas Communications. Emily was just writing to let me know “Seretha W. of Hammonds Plains, N.S., recently received $20,000 from Dr Pepper Canada to be put towards her education goal of obtaining a Master of Nursing degree. As part […]

Marco… meet John and John; AIMS… meet hypocrisy

“The business of government is not to prop up businesses,” harrumphed Marco Navarro-Genie, president and CEO of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), the Halifax-based right-wing think tank that rarely encounters a government program (or government for that matter) it does not think should shrivel up and die. “The real point,” he continued, “ought […]

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 […]

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 […]

Don’t trust Nova Scotia Power to fix what ails it

So there were these trees, see. And, it being July, these trees had leaves. Leafy leaves. And, this being Nova Scotia, there was a storm. Which meant rain that made the leaves wet. And wind that blew the wet leaves, so some of those trees fell down. around So — this still being Nova Scotia […]

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 […]

Revolution rising

As the poor keep getting poorer, global uprisings get closer and closer. You have been warned. I’m a university professor. I make better than your average income. Although ours is not a union shop, our salaries reflect the successes of traditionally strong faculty unions at bigger institutions around us. I’ve also been teaching for […]

How does Emera afford to put its name on our skating oval?

It doesn’t You do. One way or the other… Solidarity Halifax’s quixotic campaign to rename the Commons skating oval isn’t likely to find many takers among cash-starved city councilors, but it should give the rest of us pause. How is it that Emera, the parent company of Nova Scotia Power, the private utility that keeps […]

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 […]