Stephen McNeil’s best laid plans…

Last week, Nova Scotia’s 9,000 teachers decisively rejected a tentative contract with the provincial government. With their vote, the teachers instantly scuppered Stephen McNeil’s carefully crafted strategy to bring public sector unions to heel before introducing a see-we-did-it balanced budget in advance of the next provincial election. McNeil had begun strategically with the teachers, traditionally […]

Unanswered questions: Shoppers shoplifting video, and what it shows… or doesn’t

There are still many unanswered questions about what Shandell McNamara calls “the most humiliating experience of my life.” McNamara, a 27-year-old mixed-race woman, went to the Fenwick Street Shoppers Drug Mart last Monday night to pick up a package. Instead, she was confronted by the associate-owner, who claimed the store had video footage showing her […]

Andrew Younger hurtles to the hell of political oblivion

You wish he would stop. For his sake. But he doesn’t. Andrew Younger seems constitutionally incapable of not hurtling down the same, self-immolating highway to the hell of political oblivion paved over — and then over again — by gone-but-not-forgotten former NDP MLA Trevor Zinck. Less than a week after Younger was ceremoniously tossed from […]

Andrew Younger… gone too late

Premier Stephen McNeil was right to fire Andrew Younger. He was wrong to wait until the situation had degenerated into a soap-opera, he-said-he-did embarrassment. On Wednesday, Younger, the province’s environment minister, abused his parliamentary privilege to avoid testifying at the trial of a woman accused of assaulting him on Oct. 22, 2013, the day the Liberals […]

Stephen McNeil, the Miller contract and cavalier condescension

I like Bernie Miller, and I think Stephen McNeil is lucky to have the currently-on-leave managing partner at McInnes Cooper as one of his Liberal government’s key political advisors. Having said that, I also think, as a matter of public policy, we need to ask serious questions about McNeil’s deal with Bernard F. Miller Services […]

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 […]

All pain, no gain

So, let us begin today’s wreck-onomics lesson in Athens where — as I write this — Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in the frenetic middle of executing an Olympics-worthy double-reverse cartwheel flip, trying to convince his countrymen to vote in favor of a European bailout deal they — and he — decisively rejected the […]

How not to save a sinking ship

It’s hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for the conundrum Stephen McNeil’s Liberals face as they scramble to figure out what to do next with the listing ship that is the Yarmouth-Portland ferry service. But it’s also hard not to believe the government’s decision last week to put off deciding who will run […]

Finance minister’s new approach sounds like more of the same public sector blaming

One would like to believe newly installed Finance Minister Randy Delorey meant it. Last week he told union leaders representing teachers, health care workers, paramedics and assorted clusters of government employees he wanted to meet to discuss a “new approach” to collective bargaining. There are more than 300 collective agreements slated for re-negotiation this year, […]

Bad week for Nova Star; worse weeks to come for us

It was not a good week for Nova Star Cruises, the operators of the Yarmouth-Portland ferry. But it may turn out to have been an even worse week for Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government. Let’s start with Nova Star. Last Tuesday, CEO Mark Amundsen announced it had reached a multi-year deal with Euroferries Express Ltd. to […]