Now that the Fangless Five have become the Insensate Seven, it’s time for…?

Stephen McNeil’s Liberals have made a mockery of the notion of public accountability. So now the opposition parties need to step up and do their — and our — job. The column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner February 4, 2019. Stephen McNeil’s Liberals have made a mockery of the notion of public accountability. So […]

The Fang-less Five, the McNeil government and (un)accountability

In his own Trumpian, alternate-fact world, MLA Gordon Wilson wants us to believe the public accounts committee can’t venture beyond the narrow confines of published auditor general’s reports when examining public spending because… well, that would be against the law. Time for Wilson to re-read the “law.” This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner […]

Catherine Tully’s power to persuade vs government’s power to ignore

If you’re denied access to information even after the information and privacy commissioner has reviewed your request and deemed it legitimate, your only recourse is to take the government to court. At your own expense, of course. It doesn’t have to be that way. It is because it’s in the government’s interest to keep you […]

Jen’s choice is no choice at all; why not?

Jen Powley is smart. She has four degrees. She’s a prize-winning author with an eclectic CV and a significant record of ongoing accomplishment. She’s still only 41. So why does she face a government-imposed Hobson’s life choice: go into a nursing home to be warehoused and “removed from society” for the rest of her life, […]

Let us eat cake

Since 1971, Nova Scotians have been paying the price for Michelin’s success. And not just with grants and loans and the rest. We’ve been paying with our sovereignty and self-respect too. This column first appeared in the Halifax Examiner October 29, 2018. Granton, Nova Scotia: Michelin North America (Canada) Inc. today announced two new projects at […]

Do P-3 hospitals offer value for money spent? None of your business, says Stephen McNeil

What does Deloitte — the company we paid $500,000 to analyze the wisdom of P3s for new hospital infrastructure — have to say in its report. We don’t know. Why not? Because “your Liberal government,” which, since 2013, “has been dedicated to being the most open and transparent government in the country, tirelessly working to […]

Stephen McNeil: Read his lips. Just don’t believe a word he says

Here in Stephen McNeil’s Nova Scotia, we should mark Right to Know Week by lowering the flag to half-mast and lighting a mourning candle in memory of the quaint notion citizens have some fundamental right to know what its government is doing. This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner September 24, 2018. Happy “Right […]

McNeil says there’s ‘lots’ of film activity; the facts tell a different story

There is something vaguely Trumpian in Premier Stephen McNeil’s continuing, reality-be-damned insistence his government’s 2015 consultation-and-logic-free decision to dump a longstanding, working-well film tax credit, then replace it with a more restrictive, less incentivizing “Nova Scotia Film and Television Incentive Fund” is all working out just fine, the way we planned it, thank you very […]

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 […]

The Yarmouth ferry subsidy? Still? Still more? Always…

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner July 30, 2018. I could say I told them so — and I did, way back when “them” was still Rodney Macdonald and his Tories, and from then on forward through Darrell Dexter and Stephen McNeil to whatever same-old-same-old will come next — but I’d have to stand in […]