Doing the right thing the wrong way

It has been a crazy rollercoaster of a pin-balling, ping-ponged week for those of us who get our knickers knotted about seemingly esoteric matters like public access to public information and government accountability. But all’s well that ends well… sort of. Let’s start with NDP MLA Howard Epstein’s “inadvertent” leak of confidential caucus information indicating […]

The troubled child and the vindictive state

Is it possible nanny-state community services officials have decided to punish the grandparents of a boy who dared question their decision to send him out of province for treatment by dumping him back in their laps with minimal supports, setting them—and him—up for I-told-you-so failure? That seems the most rational conclusion after reading the vague […]

Beware Canadian Taxpayer tea party

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation is right to raise alarms about the growing inequity between generous pensions paid politicians and the reality too many in the private sector have inadequate, or no pensions … Uh… right… That isn’t exactly what the libertarian-when-it-suits-them CTF has its knickers in a knot about. The CTF—which bills itself as a […]

Dear Darrell… unsolicited advice

Dear Darrell, As you begin your second full year—summers don’t count in Nova Scotia—as premier of all you survey, allow me to offer some gratuitous, unsolicited and unlikely to be appreciated advice. (But given your government’s precipitous free-fall from electoral grace, you need all the advice you can get.) First, stop trying to be a […]

Inquiry needed into children's stories that don't end well

I’ve been writing about child protection issues since 2004 when I got interested in the story of a Halifax couple embroiled in a highly publicized, 67-hour, shots-fired standoff with police. The issue: Children’s Aid had seized their five-month old daughter, not because of anything the couple had done to the child—in fact, evidence indicated they […]

Family an obstacle—but for whom?

Nova Scotia’s Community Services Department has upped the ante: last week it severed family access to a troubled Cole Harbour teenager it had shipped off to an Ontario residential care facility last year. It will now apply to family court “to vary the current order with respect to access,” thus legalizing the elimination of the […]

Welcome to the rat days of summer

When did we realize we had finally entered the deeps of the news-challenged rat… er, dog days of summer? Was it when that story about the number of rats per city block in Halifax—75; You count ‘em, I’ll pass—made CBC Radio’s marquee World at Six news show last week? Or perhaps it was when we […]

We want answers; they offer hype

I don’t necessarily oppose the new convention centre proposed for that gaping hole in the heart of downtown Halifax. And I don’t completely subscribe to the too-tall, edge-of-the-wedge principal objections raised by the Save the View Coalition. The preservationist group argues the convention centre’s twin 18 and 14-storey towers will obliterate much of the iconic […]

NDP Year 1: What went wrong?

On June 9, 2009—one year ago next week—Nova Scotia voters took a flying leap of faith and fate, sweeping out a tired Tory government, sidelining the faint comeback hopes of a still-recovering Liberal party and handing the keys to office for the first time ever to the New Democrats. It is probably fair to suggest […]

Liberals perfect face plant

Can anyone explain why Nova Scotia Liberals—this province’s natural governing party for much of the last century—seem so hell-bent on shooting themselves, their leaders and their chances of forming the next government flush in the face? Consider the last time there was a majority Liberal government in Nova Scotia. In 1993, John Savage swept a […]