Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Words with Mayors

In my coverage of CBRM council this week, I made a crack about the mayor—who was elected as Amanda McDougall and has been referred to for the past two years as Amanda McDougall—suddenly being referenced in the meeting agenda as Mayor Amanda T. McDougall-Merrill.

I was actually going to say that it reminded me of the time Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestler No Class Bobby Bass became Robert J. Bass Esq but I didn’t because I was afraid the mayor would think I was comparing her to No Class Bobby Bass and it turns out my caution was warranted because my much milder joke apparently left her “thoroughly pissed.”

I know this not because she reached out to me, or even tagged me, but because a reader sent me her Facebook post from her private page—a page I can’t view.

The gist of it was that I am, if not a social media troll myself, then someone who encourages the trolls with my “click-bait” articles. I also, apparently, subject women to ridiculous scrutiny and “ignorantly” mock them for using their married names in public life.

Mayor McDougall-Merrill portrayed my article to her followers as one that “focused narrowly” on her name instead of on council business but that could not be further from the truth: the joke about her name was a throw-away line in an article about CBRM council’s in camera discussions of waterfront development and CAO performance reviews.

I’m not reproducing her post because part of me suspects she was having a bad day and my joke (which was lame, sure, but not malicious) put her over the edge. However, another part of me suspects she knows that if she can dismiss me as a misogynist social media troll out to get her then she doesn’t have to come to grips with my criticisms of council secrecy.

There are lots of things to be pissed about in CBRM right now, like child poverty and the lack of housing and the crisis in healthcare and delayed Fiona repairs, but a reporter making a joke about your middle initial? I feel ridiculous even writing that.

As my final word on this matter, I’ll direct you to this interview I did with McDougall-Merrill back in 2016, when she was running for a seat on CBRM council and I was subjecting all the women running that year to ridiculous scrutiny and ignorantly mocking them, whenever possible, for using their married names in public life.

 

Port Developments

I heard James Kerr, chair of the Port of Sydney Development Corporation board, on CBC Information Morning Cape Breton on Thursday and he said a few things that struck me as interesting.

First, he claimed that people “come to his door” at the Port with ideas for business development, but I don’t think he has a door (let alone an office) at the Port—he’s the board chair, he has an occasional seat at the boardroom table, a table that, for some reason, is prominently featured on the Port of Sydney website:

I would think anyone with a business idea to pitch would go to the Port’s CEO or its general manager, but maybe I just don’t understand how ports work, which is why I will not be putting myself forward for the CEO position after Marlene Usher steps down in April. (I thought I’d heard that during Tuesday night’s meeting but wanted to confirm it before repeating it.)

Usher will have been in her post for EIGHT YEARS when she leaves, nine, really, because she was tapped as CEO in 2014, before the Port Corp even existed. She came in on a wave of port development optimism that in hindsight, looks something like mania. Her departure and the hiring of a new CEO is the excuse for this bid for increased autonomy for the Port of Sydney, which was the subject of Kerr’s interview.

What really got me was his response to host Steve Sutherland’s question about the management of other Atlantic Canadian ports—Sutherland asked him how ports like Halifax and Saint John were managed and Kerr said they were  independent of their respective cities, but there’s more to it than that.

Saint John and Halifax are Canadian Port Authorities (CPAs), which means they are financially self-sufficient. I had been under the impression that CPAs were not eligible for federal government funding because the Government of Canada website says: “They do not receive appropriations or funding from the government to meet operating costs or deficits,” but I missed the part that says:

CPAs can receive federal program payments under limited circumstances, specifically for emergencies and contributions in respect of the capital costs of infrastructure, environmental sustainability, and security.

Kerr and Usher, though, are arguing that they need government funding to become financially self-sufficient, so I don’t think CPA status can be the immediate goal, but I don’t really know because their presentation was not sufficiently clear.

But I think it’s fair to question the assumption that financial self-sufficiency for the Port is just another injection of public funds away. The public has spent $38 million dredging the harbor and $20 million building a second berth and $6 million on the Sydport greenfield site and $1.2 million on some Sydport docks, all in the name of “port development,” and it’s left us, after all these years, with a Port Corp claiming it will become a going concern tomorrow if it can just access more public funding.

I’m no port authority, but shouldn’t some of this investment have begun to pay off by now?

 

Quote of the Week

The quote of the week comes from an unnamed CBRM landlord cited by District 6 Councilor Glenn Paruch during last Tuesday’s night’s council meeting.

Councilors had just heard a presentation by representatives of the Property Valuation Services Corporation about the CBRM tax rolls, and Paruch asked for sympathy for the landlords of this province who, because of rent controls in force until December 2023, may raise rents only 2% per year.

“We have to be beneficial and mindful” this unnamed rentier told Paruch, “of what people can afford.”

I was about to yell, “Amen!” when I realized the speaker meant what landlords can afford to pay government, not what tenants can afford to pay landlords.

This quote was emblematic of the entire council discussion, which tiptoed up to a realization (in their case, that property tax is regressive and hurts the poor more than the rich) without ever quite getting there.

 

Joint Subs

This is a housekeeping item: the joint Halifax Examiner/Cape Breton Spectator  subscription is being phased out (it’s just become administratively impossible as the Examiner is now a qualified news organization under federal guidelines and the Spectator is not).

If you signed up for the joint subscription through the Spectator site, it will become a Spectator-only subscription and your payment will be adjusted accordingly. I am hoping this will be a smooth transition but there may be road bumps, in which case, I ask you to bear with me.