Would you buy a used government from one of these guys?

Don’t worry. You don’t have to choose. Liberal delegates will pick your next premier for you. All you have to do is live with him… for a while. Welcome to 2021! In addition to figuring out the appropriate trash folder into which to dump all of 2020 (along with last week’s plethora of pleading emails […]

Health minister promises to fix long-term care, but offers no money to actually fix it

Last week’s expert-panel report into the province’s flat-lining long-term care system offered a clarion call for the government to finally fix our ailing long-term care system. But the panel didn’t provide a clear, costed pathway to do that, in part because the government didn’t provide it with enough useful data about the existing problems and […]

Health care crisis? Check. Leadership to solve it? Another question…

Did you know that, as of Friday morning, the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s News website was reporting a full computer page — 10 different items — flagging current, ongoing, never-ending emergency room closures in Nova Scotia? From the Lillian Fraser Memorial in Tatamagouche, to the Eastern Shore Memorial in Sheet Harbour, to Guysborough Memorial, to […]

Who has the ear of the finance minister? Hint: not you

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 27, 2017) No need to ask what the Halifax Chamber of Commerce wants to see in next month’s provincial budget. They’ve made their wish list plain enough in their own, well-chosen words: “Taxation: Reduce the tax burden by either reducing the corporate income tax rate, increasing […]

What a difference a minister makes

What a difference a minister makes. When he was Nova Scotia’s minister of the environment, Randy Delorey presided over a public consultation process to determine what Nova Scotia should do next about what we discard. His department received 260 written submissions, the majority of which focused on what environmental bureaucrats like to call “extended producer […]