MLA expenses a scandal but….

Yes, the MLA expenses scandal is a scandal. Some of what some MLAs filed as legitimate expenses were not. A few claims may even be criminal. Let’s make MLAs pay back what they can’t justify, and prosecute those whose actions crossed the line. Let’s fix a screwed-up system. Then let’s move on. When it comes […]

Whose best interests?

For Family Court Judge Beryl MacDonald, the question seemed simple. Does she have the authority to order the minister of community services to provide a service the department, by policy, doesn’t offer? Her answer, delivered during a family court hearing this week, was equally simple. She does not. The legal issue may be simple; the […]

Visionless NS Tories look for leader before vision

Tonight, 600 Nova Scotia Tories will gather at the Westin Hotel to pay perfunctory tribute to Rodney MacDonald, their thankfully former, now hardly ever mentioned leader. After that—if not before—conventioneers will get down to the real, if unspoken business at hand: making sure the party doesn’t blow it again like they did in 2006. That’s […]

NDP's first six months: very well but….

Nova Scotia’s new New Democratic Party government isn’t so new anymore. A week from tomorrow, it will have been in office six months. How well has it performed? At one level, the answer would have to be very well. Darrell Dexter’s government has demonstrated a level of calming, policy-wonkish competence sadly lacking during the chaotic, […]

Truth, lies, the NDP and us…

They were lying. We knew they were lying, even while they were still telling them. We voted for them anyway. Some of us may have secretly hoped—for our children’s children’s sake—that, not only were they lying but also that they understood they were lying so they wouldn’t then feel obliged to translate their little lies […]

Past time for Nova Scotians to honour Viola Desmond

Damn. Missed it. Again. I’m not the only one. Which is unfortunate. For everyone. Last Sunday marked the anniversary of an event that symbolizes—or should—the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in Canada. On November 8, 1946, a 32-year-old black beautician named Viola Desmond was driving from Halifax to Sydney when her car broke […]

Time for Liberals to crawl out of the muck

Pity Stephen McNeil. The NDP wants to stop his Liberals from continuing to tap a tainted $2.37-million party trust fund to pay its bills. “The motive… is political,” McNeil complained to reporters after the government introduced the bill this week, adding plaintively: “You’d have to ask them why they would specifically go after us.” Uh… […]

Scotia Surgery deal cosmetic

This week’s revelation that our on-its-way-out-turn-on-the-taps Tory government renewed a controversial contract with Scotia Surgery in early June—just six days before voters shoved it onto the political trash heap—was… well, interesting. But not surprising. More intriguing—and perhaps more telling—was Health Minister Maureen MacDonald’s shrug response. “They’re entitled to sign contracts right up to the day […]

One promise Dexter shouldn't keep

Stephen McNeil was right. And Darrell Dexter was wrong. During the last provincial election campaign, then-opposition NDP leader Dexter made a boy-scout solemn promise that, if elected, his government would balance the province’s books next year. Cross his heart. Really… Stephen McNeil, the then-new leader of the nowhere-to-go-but-up Liberal party, countered—more or less—that that was […]

Nova Scotia's immigration scandal (Oct 25, 2007)

Bolivar-Getson’s not the only one to blame To say that Carolyn Bolivar-Getson was a disaster as Nova Scotia’s immigration minister is to state the obvious. After all, this is the woman who, as recently as last week, was defending her government’s indefensible, reprehensible immigrant rip-off program by arguing that those who signed up for the […]