A tweet from Conservative MP Michel Rempel Garner caught my eye Monday morning (I’m still able to see her tweets because I’ve never been so bold as to lock horns with her online where she’s notorious for blocking anyone who disagrees with her). It said: Tomorrow morning, my bill regardingRead More

McKenna & Co I was going to call Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) a many-headed hydra but that’s the wrong metaphor, it is decidedly more of an octopus, with tentacles everywhere in everything—railroads, ports, real estate, nuclear power—but just one head, as the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation reported back in 2013:Read More

It’s been roughly a year since I wrote about two Nova Scotia housing reports, one by the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission, the other by the Housing for All Working Group of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), NS Office, and after a flurry of “affordable housing” announcements fromRead More

There have been some developments—none that could be considered good—in the Bridging Finance story. As you will recall, the local angle on this tale of a Toronto-based private debt lender in receivership is that Membertou Corporate borrowed $6.8 million from Bridging to invest in Albert Barbusci’s Sydney harbor container terminalRead More

An American company named EverWind Fuels has purchased the Point Tupper “energy storage center” (read: tank farm) from San Antonio, Texas-based NuStar Energy. EverWind paid $76.9 million for the facility (which includes the tank farm; rail-loading facilities; access to an ice-free, deep-water port; and “available electricity and fresh water”) with theRead More

Lord have Percy I don’t even know where to start with this baffling story. Freshii, the Canadian-based fast-food chain, is experimenting with a “virtual cashier” system called “Percy” that allows it to hire cashiers in Nicaragua and pay them US$3.75/hour instead of minimum wage in Ontario which is $15 (US$11.70)Read More

An explainer explained As someone who has made a practice of arguing with documents (type “Okay, stop” into this website’s search bar if you require evidence), I was beyond delighted to discover that a group of around 15 “cryptocurrency researchers and critics” had recently ganged up on a 14,000-word NewRead More

Bridging burning There’s a big update this week on Bridging Finance, the private debt lender that extended Membertou a $6.8 million loan in January 2020 to invest in Novaporte, promoter Albert Barbusci’s proposed Sydney harbor container terminal project (and that took what Barbusci termed a small equity stake of itsRead More

Once again, big thanks to a spectator for alerting me to the newly launched Cape Breton Capital Group website and for their useful comments and questions about this operation, some of which I will reproduce here today, being careful to give credit where credit is due. The Cape Breton CapitalRead More

My summer coverage focused on the August provincial election, although I also found time to read Barry Sheehy’s thoughts on ports and Martin Chernin’s case for extending his waterfront development contract (not exactly beach reading, but not entirely devoid of entertainment value either). September found me looking into the problemRead More