Are you better off? Discuss

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on September 5, 2017. As someone who has spent most of his life living to the rhythms of academia of one sort or another, I always think of the day after Labour Day as the real New Year’s Day, an annual day of stock-taking, resolution-making and future-fantasizing. […]

Stephen McNeil’s 20 per cent majority: a referendum on…?

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 19, 2017. So that didn’t take long. It will be three weeks tomorrow since Nova Scotians voted in a provincial general election. You may remember that election: the one in which Stephen McNeil’s Liberals came within a few hundred votes here or there of losing their majority […]

Since none of the above is on the ballot…

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner May 29, 2017. Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to […]

Four more years… but what might have been instead

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 5, 2017. For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV […]

Since ‘none of the above’ is on the ballot…

Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to that more select group — the none-of-the-above-but-definitely-not-Stephen-McNeil club — which Progressive Conservative […]

Are election campaigns any place to discuss serious issues?

Election campaigns are no place to discuss serious issues. That’s what Kim Campbell — Canada’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t, first-and-only-female prime minister — infamously declared in 1993 in the middle of her one and only federal election campaign as a party leader. Though I was among those who mocked her at the time, I now believe she was […]

Will the next government finally end the 15-year persecution of Dr. Gabrielle Horne? Time to ask…

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on May 8, 2017 .) Elections offer opportunities. If you have a question, or concern, or if there is some specific issue bugging the hell out of you, the upcoming election gives you the chance to raise it, face-to-doorstep, so to speak, or email-to-email, with the candidate […]

Havana, Halifax and the state of democracy

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on May 1, 2017 .) I confess. I spent a quiet weekend while my Nova Scotia journalist colleagues no doubt filled theirs to the almost end with feverish when-will-he/will-he pull the plug media speculation about the date of our next provincial election. That’s because I spent my […]

The way politics works — and doesn’t — in Nova Scotia

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 13, 2017) I got a call the other evening from an earnest young telemarketer person, urging me to pony up cash so the New Democratic Party could wage glorious, seat-re-gaining war in the coming provincial election, which he suggested — with even greater earnestness and urgency […]