CBRM council voted on a 5%, across-the-board — residential and commercial — property tax cut this week. I think this chart, from the province’s Open Data portal, helps provide some perspective on this. It shows average Nova Scotia municipal residential property tax rates from 2009/10 to 2020/21. (It’s interactive, youRead More

When we left off, CBRM District 8 Councilor James Edwards (who, as noted in Part I of this article on the CBRM tax cut, is a former Canada Revenue employee), was agreeing that he too, would like to pay less tax, but arguing that to be “fiscally responsible,” any reductionRead 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

More than 100 years after shipyard workers in Lunenburg, N.S., shaped wood and metal to build the Bluenose schooner, the tradition of local, hand-built excellence lives on. But now, instead of fishing boats, it’s fighter jets — Brett Ruskin, CBC, 6 April 2022   It’s such an apt comparison. LikeRead More

I don’t know about you, maybe you jog 3km a day, and regularly bench your weight, but I personally have not exercised enough during the pandemic. Oh sure, it started out well enough with the intention to “work out, eat right and read more” but it fizzled over time. LifeRead 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

David Morgan of the Port Hastings-based companies Celtic Air and AxAir Aviation, is suing Halifax-based Gateway Facilities and Sydney businessman Christopher Neville, owner of Ava K Holdings, over what I would call a train wreck of a business deal were that not so obviously the wrong metaphor for a fightRead More

I get email notifications of “recent decisions” by Nova Scotia courts that I don’t always open but yesterday I did and got sucked into reading the March 18 decision in the case of Matthews v. Ocean Nutrition Canada Limited, which led me to the original decision in the case, handedRead More

As you will see in a moment, I’ve indulged myself this week not just by focusing on a court case that was decided in 2020 (and which arguably has no real Cape Breton connection unless your Cape Breton includes Mulgrave) but by following up all sorts of weird odds andRead More

Last week, I took a cooking class run by New Dawn Enterprise’s A Better Bite Community Kitchen. Called “Tomato Sauce Five Ways,” the class was held in A Better Bite’s facilities in the New Dawn Centre on Nepean Street in Sydney and led by dietician Jessica MacNeil. She taught usRead More