How the government chose to build two new schools in the ‘right’ place in the right pre-election time

The very suggestion the Nova Scotia government would cherry-pick new school building projects from the bottom of the priority pile simply because said schools would be built in constituencies held by Education Minister Karen Casey and Premier Stephen McNeil, is — cue the harrumphs — “a ridiculous comment to make.” So says the minister […]

Do elections toll for us?

It is interesting — and perhaps instructive — to compare the McNeil government’s stealth, stroke-of-a-pen, done-and-dusted announcement it had clawed back a basic human right (a minimum wage) for teenaged hockey players with its aw-shucks, no-rush, we-just-want-what-you-want chorus for last week’s release of a study on twinning the province’s 100-series highways. The study itself was […]

P3s: Do we trust the McNeil government to act in our interest, or in the interest of its own re-election?

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently released an evaluation of the 1990s private-public partnership (P3) program under which four private contractors built 39 public schools they then leased back to Nova Scotia. P3 shell-game deals are “typically used to conceal government expenditures and provide guaranteed long-term profits for contractors.” In Nova Scotia, the CCPA […]