The auditor general, the convention centre and the premier

One can understand Premier Darrell Dexter’s aggressive/defensive, head-in-the-convention-centre response to last week’s auditor general’s report. That report—which damned the shoddiness of the business case Trade Centre Ltd. concocted to justify a new convention centre—called on the government to launch an independent review of TCL’s numbers. Dexter was having none of it. TCL based its conclusions, […]

Halifax International Security Forum: Making the World Safe for Peter MacKay

The idea for this past weekend’s fourth annual Halifax International Security Forum, Peter MacKay told the Globe and Mail, was born because our defence minister “got a little tired” of traveling to other global security conferences in places like Munich where the discussions were all “Europe-America, Europe-America.” Voila the Halifax Forum. MacKay’s “brainchild”—as another media […]

The mill has been saved, the question remains

I have rewritten this column three times in the past three days as the on, then off, then on-again deal to re-start the NewPage mill in Point Tupper played itself out in after-hours news releases and hastily convened press conferences.But my essential question hasn’t changed. How much is more than too much? It’s far from […]

Convergys diverging: Don't pay us, we won't call you

On Tuesday, 300 employees at the Convergys call centre in Cornwallis got the bad news. Their employer—in the euphemistic-speak favoured by bad-news-delivering companies everywhere—had decided to “transition” their jobs elsewhere “to better serve its clients by increasing efficiencies and reducing costs.” They’d been fired. The reason: a six-year government payroll rebate program that initially lured […]