Nova Scotia’s generational highway mega projects: an idea whose time has gone?

On Friday, the government issued a request for proposals for a $1.5-million study to figure out whether to twin eight sections of 100-series highways and — as importantly — how to raise the $1.5 billion that will be needed to complete what Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal Minister Geoff MacLellan calls a “once-in-a-generation set of mega-projects.” […]

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 […]

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 […]

Selected dispatches from last week’s “whoopsie” file

How many Conservative cabinet ministers does it take to mislead Canadians? Last weekend, Stephen Harper trotted out his own trusty troika — Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, Veterans Affairs Minister (sic) Julian Fantino and Justice Minister Peter MacKay — for a $200 million photo op/announcement during the Halifax International Security Forum, a.k.a. Peter’s Playground (official cost: […]

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 […]

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 […]

Was Darrell Dexter right?

Metro/Jeff HarperThen Premier Darrell Dexter answers questions in this file photo. Perhaps Darrell Dexter was right. I mean the circa-2009 Darrell Dexter who — flushed with electoral victory and oozing political hubris — unleashed his freshly anointed pocket-calculator brigade on the question whether to keep propping up the Yarmouth-Portland ferry. The number of passengers had […]

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 […]

Serendipity

Gerry Pond’s career has been marked by a series of serendipitous moments, but there’s much more than chance to the incredible success of the Atlantic angel behind a billion dollars worth of recent technology deals. “Will you be my best man?” Gerry Pond’s friend asked. It was the spring of 1966. Pond was 21. He’d […]