Privatizing public services: electoral gain for economic pain

So, let me see if I understand this correctly. Nova Scotia’s Department of Motor Vehicles takes in $120 million a year to register vehicles, peddle license plates, test drivers, promote highway safety, etc. The DMV costs $30-35 million a year to operate, meaning it nets the provincial treasury $85-90 million a year. But the DMV’s […]

Stephen McNeil thinks we need electoral reform; just don’t ask him to do anything about it…

There is something rich — and richly ironic — hearing Stephen McNeil fret about the number of voters who didn’t bother to cast ballots in last week’s three provincial by-elections. McNeil, after all, chose the date. He could have called the by-elections for late spring when voters might conceivably have been more engaged. Instead, he picked […]

CBC Nova Scotia’s Halifax election financing database: lessons learned

Do you know how many of the donations to winning candidates in the 2012 Halifax municipal election came from companies “involved in development?” Do you know how much money your district councillor received from this dog’s breakfast of “involved” developers, construction companies and real estate firms, each with self-interests in sundry proposals, projects and permits […]

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 […]

The film tax fandango: saving pennies, losing the future

Last week’s provincial budget shows how governments can be tough-talking, penny-pinching wise and what-were-they-smoking, real-world foolish, both at the same time. Exhibit A: the evisceration of Nova Scotia’s film tax credit. Finance Minister Diana Whalen argued the credit was too generous, went to filmmakers whose films weren’t shot in Nova Scotia and to companies that […]

The rise and fall of Andrew Younger

I’ve known Andrew Younger since the summer of 1998. I was director of the King’s School of Journalism. He was on the waiting list for our one-year Bachelor of Journalism class. He wasn’t near the top of the list, but he was persistent. He maintained what seemed like daily contact, just letting us know how […]

Students speak, government isn’t listening

Last week’s student march on Province House has become an annual rite of the winter season, not unlike its usual accompanying, storm-tossed February headline salad: Monday’s “Traffic Gridlock Hits Halifax,” Tuesday’s “Halifax Digging out from Biggest Snowfall” to Friday’s cheerless end-of-first-week-of-the-month news “Snowfall Amounts for February in Halifax Almost Equal to January Total.” Predictable. Depressing. […]

Health care unions: arbitrator’s report unlikely to be the end of the story

By this time next week, government-appointed mediator-arbitrator Jim Dorsey is expected to hand down his final report into which health care worker should be represented by which health care union. His choices seem limited. The Health Authorities Act — which the McNeil government introduced last fall as part of its promise to merge nine district […]

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 […]

Bourque, Zahef-Bibeau, personal consequences and public accountability

There is little doubt re-watching video of Justin Bourque chillingly describe the targeted killing of their husbands, sons, fathers — “It’s sad,” Bourque explains blandly. “They might have had a wife and kids, but every soldier has a wife and kids, right?… It’s all about whose side you chose, and they chose the wrong one” […]