Privatizing public services: electoral gain for economic pain

So, let me see if I understand this correctly. Nova Scotia’s Department of Motor Vehicles takes in $120 million a year to register vehicles, peddle license plates, test drivers, promote highway safety, etc. The DMV costs $30-35 million a year to operate, meaning it nets the provincial treasury $85-90 million a year. But the DMV’s […]

Stephen McNeil thinks we need electoral reform; just don’t ask him to do anything about it…

There is something rich — and richly ironic — hearing Stephen McNeil fret about the number of voters who didn’t bother to cast ballots in last week’s three provincial by-elections. McNeil, after all, chose the date. He could have called the by-elections for late spring when voters might conceivably have been more engaged. Instead, he picked […]

Nova Scotia’s generational highway mega projects: an idea whose time has gone?

On Friday, the government issued a request for proposals for a $1.5-million study to figure out whether to twin eight sections of 100-series highways and — as importantly — how to raise the $1.5 billion that will be needed to complete what Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal Minister Geoff MacLellan calls a “once-in-a-generation set of mega-projects.” […]

Abolish the senate? Ask the people

Quick now. Name me 10 things Nova Scotia’s 10 partisan, unelected senators have done in the past 10 years to influence federal laws or policies to protect Nova Scotia’s interests in ways that, say, our 11 partisan, politically elected members of parliament have not. Okay, five things in five years? One in one? Too difficult? […]

Marco… meet John and John; AIMS… meet hypocrisy

“The business of government is not to prop up businesses,” harrumphed Marco Navarro-Genie, president and CEO of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), the Halifax-based right-wing think tank that rarely encounters a government program (or government for that matter) it does not think should shrivel up and die. “The real point,” he continued, “ought […]

The film tax fandango: saving pennies, losing the future

Last week’s provincial budget shows how governments can be tough-talking, penny-pinching wise and what-were-they-smoking, real-world foolish, both at the same time. Exhibit A: the evisceration of Nova Scotia’s film tax credit. Finance Minister Diana Whalen argued the credit was too generous, went to filmmakers whose films weren’t shot in Nova Scotia and to companies that […]

The rise and fall of Andrew Younger

I’ve known Andrew Younger since the summer of 1998. I was director of the King’s School of Journalism. He was on the waiting list for our one-year Bachelor of Journalism class. He wasn’t near the top of the list, but he was persistent. He maintained what seemed like daily contact, just letting us know how […]

Stephen McNeil declares health care victory… and runs

What better time to declare victory and slink off to bind your wounds than just before cocktail hour on the Friday afternoon before school March break and the eve of another Sunday nor’easter? (It’s no coincidence two of the top four Google News search terms modifying “Nova Scotia” Saturday morning were “weather and “storm;” “health […]

Government’s ‘we know best’ approach to race relations… again, still

It’s difficult to see Education Minister Karen Casey’s decision to cut off funding for the Council on African Canadian Education (CACE) as anything but vindictive. Let’s examine the history. In 1996, after high school race riots and a critical government advisory report recommended establishing an Africentric Learning Institute to improve black students’ education, the province […]

Health care unions, the government and the mess that will be

Really? Last year, the McNeil government passed the Health Authorities Act, ostensibly (and laudably) to streamline the province’s health care system, but also (and shabbily) to game that system. The legislation reduced the number of health districts from 10 to two, and the number of collective bargaining units from 50 to four. But the government’s […]