Nova Scotia budget: the cost of cutting v the value of investing

In the all-too-brief interregnum between Thursday’s bad-news federal budget and tomorrow’s more-bad-news provincial budget, it’s worth noting the across-the-board, cost-cutting Kool Aid fiscal policy makers in Ottawa and Halifax have swallowed is not the only—or necessarily best—way to slay the deficit dragon. The Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, for example, […]

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 […]

Why can’t we have Viola Desmond day and…?

As Canada Post prepares issue a new stamp next month to celebrate the life of Viola Desmond, our own government seems about to quietly take a pass on the opportunity to honour the Halifax woman whose personal courage remains a symbolic inspiration in the fight for human rights in Canada. In 1946—nine years before Rosa […]

Progress? Who's whining now?

On Wednesday, local radio personality Bobby Mac launched a new Facebook group “for those of us who are tired of those whining people who don’t want any progress in this great city of Halifax.” Its name? SCREW THE VIEW!! By Saturday morning, STV had 163 members. “We are tired of the groups that stop progress […]

Rocky Jones: The past and future of the Nova Scotia human rights' struggle

I wanted to ask Rocky Jones about his Wednesday lecture: “The Struggle for Human Rights in African Nova Scotian Communities, 1961-2011.” No problem. When? Not today. He’s on a panel at a national conference on public policy. Saturday, he’s in Truro, keynote speaker at an International Year for People of African Descent symposium. Then Ottawa […]

Africville: The lesson still unlearned

No one asked them. Again. The real lesson of the original Africville relocation—which should be seared into our collective consciousness after 50 years of hard-learned lesson-living—is that outsiders, even well intentioned ones, cannot make decisions for a community without at least asking the people of that community what they really want. Back in the 1960s, […]

Flight 111 and might-have-could-have-possibly-maybe

Friday’s much-hyped Fifth Estate documentary on the crash of Swissair Flight 111 generated much arcing and sparking about its cause but—in the end—no incendiary device, no hard evidence the tragic 1998 accident was anything but. That said, the story raised questions that deserve better than read-the-report, cone-of-silence non-responses from the RCMP and the Transportation Safety […]

Remembering the Citadel (hotel)

Last week, SilverBirch Hotels, the Vancouver-based company that owns the Citadel Halifax hotel, announced plans to flatten it. The company intends to replace the venerable downtown landmark with a $60-million, triple-tower, hotel-apartment complex it says will generate “a lot more” street-level activity in the northern downtown while conforming to HRM by Design—and legislation protecting views […]

Heroes and blemishes: Edward Cornwallis and Cesar Chavez

“Edward Cornwallis is deeply offensive to members of our Mi’kmaq communities and to Nova Scotians generally who believe school names should recognize persons whose contributions to society are unblemished by acts repugnant to the values we wish our schools to embody and represent.” Kirk Arsenault Aboriginal Halifax School Board member *** The Atlantic’s latest issue […]

The Senator, the Herald and the obituary

Senator Keith Davey died last week at 84. Davey was a Liberal backroom wizard, famous for wresting electoral triumph from the jaws of political ignominy. In 1963, for example, he helped Lester Pearson become prime minister. In 1974, he helped transform Pierre Trudeau’s then-floundering minority government into a renewed majority. Most famously, in 1979, he […]