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 […]

Is that any way to start a discussion?

The United Way’s report on what it takes to live in Halifax, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s knee-jerk response to the report and the need for an open, honest debate… So what’s the difference between minimum wage and a living wage? In Halifax, about $10 an hour. That was the recent surprise-but-no-surprise conclusion […]

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 […]

Broten report sings from the Common Book of Corporate Prayer

We shouldn’t be surprised. Not after federal finance minister Joe Oliver last week made the case — without embarrassment — Ottawa didn’t need to do an independent analysis of the cost-benefits of a $550 million tax credit for small business because the self-interested lobby group Canadian Federation of Independent Business told him it was a […]

AIMS aims to cover its…

“The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax has not responded to questions.” That nugget was nested in the last line, last paragraph of a Globe and Mail story last week about the Harper government’s efforts to “intimidate, muzzle and silence its critics.” Ottawa is spending $13.4 million so its tax auditors can descend, lotus-like, […]

What would you do to un-Harper Canada?

Winner of the 2014 Atlantic Journalism Award for Commentary — Any Medium. For as long as I can remember, Canadian politics has been a pleasantly diverting if meaningless game of rascal tossing. We pick one set of rascals to govern us and toss the last set out. After a while, those no-longer new rascals run […]

Revolution rising

As the poor keep getting poorer, global uprisings get closer and closer. You have been warned. I’m a university professor. I make better than your average income. Although ours is not a union shop, our salaries reflect the successes of traditionally strong faculty unions at bigger institutions around us. I’ve also been teaching for […]

Gas taxes, political hot air and the real questions

Given last week’s gas price gusher that propelled pump sticker shock beyond even the last record-breaking penny point set in 2012, it’s little wonder Premier Stephen McNeil rushed for the cover of a sort-of pledge to cut Nova Scotia’s portion of the harmonized sales tax it currently tacks on to the top of the taxes […]

This is the campaign we spent 3 years waiting for?

What to make of Liberal leader Stephen McNeil’s plan to save taxpayers money by making Nova Scotia Power responsible for (and responsible for footing the bill for) what is now the regulated, arms’ length, non-profit — and working very well, thank you all the same — energy-reducing agency known as Efficiency Nova Scotia? The reality […]

Dexter's budget tinkers at the progressive edges, but is that enough?

Did Darrell Dexter balance the budget? Is the pope Argentinian? Depends on which pope you mean. And what you mean by balance. Not to forget “the…” The perhaps more relevant pre-election questions out of last week’s legislature exercise: Would the other parties have done anything different in either the budget’s broad strokes or in its […]