Is Joan Jessome most hated woman in Nova Scotia?

Let’s start with a question: is Joan Jessome the most hated woman in Nova Scotia? Google “Joan Jessome” and “hated,” and you’ll get 5,630 hits in less than a Google second. The top three results are news stories following the December 11, 2015, announcement she would be retiring as president of the Nova Scotia […]

Stephen McNeil’s film dream — you have to (make) believe

To hear him spin it, you’d think Stephen McNeil lived inside the fantasy bubble of film and television instead of outside, systematically decimating the real-world industry that creates screen magic. In January, two of Nova Scotia’s most successful production companies became the latest to announce they were shuttering their businesses here. Since 2001, Special Effects […]

Why Bay Ferries wasn’t concerned, and why we should be

It was early February. The first “new-ferry-system-has-not-been-confirmed… we-must-unfortunately-cancel-the-space” emails from skittish U.S. tour operators had begun landing on reservations desks at Nova Scotia hotels and resorts. Local tourism operators desperately needed to know if there would — as the government had promised — actually be a ferry service this summer between Yarmouth and Portland, Maine. […]

Gary Burrill: the politics of hope, or hope for politics

Cast your mind back to October 9, 2013. The morning after the night before. Nova Scotia’s first ever NDP government had just morphed into Nova Scotia’s first one-term government in more than 130 years. The party that began its re-election campaign with 31 of 52 legislature seats hobbled across the finish line with seven shell-shocked […]

Nova Scotia Power is reporting its first outage of the morning… and other tales we shouldn’t hear

I woke up one recent morning and flipped on the radio. “Nova Scotia Power is reporting its first outage of the morning,” the newscaster began. It was not a storm day. Or the day after. Or even the day after that. We were in the middle of a brief winter storm interregnum. Skies were clear. […]

Seniors’ pharmacare? It’s past time for a national, universal pharmacare program

Since we’ve been talking about seniors’ pharmacare, perhaps it’s time to change the modifier and resume a longstanding conversation about national pharmacare. Canada is the only industrialized country in the world that boasts a universal health care program but offers no parallel national scheme so those who need prescription medications can actually get them. The […]

Government’s Orwellian doublespeak on Pharmacare, the ‘balanced budget’ and the next election

On Jan. 15, Nova Scotia’s Health and Wellness department — Leo Glavine, proprietor — issued a gauzy, feel-fine press release headlined, “Lower Seniors’ Pharmacare Co-pays Begin April 1.” You had to carefully parse, syllable by syllable, its disingenuous first sentence — “Changes to the Seniors’ Pharmacare program mean Nova Scotians enrolled in the program will soon […]

Film tax credits: a tale of two jurisdictions

“The math is simple,” explained the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a Jan. 8 editorial about the state of that state’s film tax credit. Pennsylvania is currently in the middle of a messy budget kerfuffle. The big picture is beyond the scope of this column. But it’s worth noting that when Gov. Tom Wolf approved an emergency […]

AIMS takes aim at the future

The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies — a.k.a the Atlantic Institute to Comfort Its Affluent Corporate Sponsors While Afflicting the Rest of Us With Neoconservative Nonsense — offers fawning support for Premier Stephen McNeil’s “fiscally responsible” decision to pre-emptively eliminate bargaining rights for 75,000 provincial public sector workers. And praises McNeil’s “important” step to wipe […]

Stephen McNeil and collective bargaining: saving us to death

Premier Stephen McNeil says Nova Scotia’s 75,000 public sector workers are welcome to bargain collectively — so long as they don’t expect to negotiate wages. The government has determined those. Working conditions? Sure. Negotiate away, but not as part of any collective bargaining process. And since they won’t be part of the contract, don’t expect the […]