I am rarely rendered speechless, but I am gobsmacked by the answers I just received from John Phalen, the economic development manager for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM). Phalen, you’ll recall, organized last week’s secret meeting between port promoter Albert Barbusci, CBRM councilors (nine of whom attended), Mayor CecilRead More

Post truth? The Cape Breton Post spoke with Alberta Barbusci, president of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), after his secret, Holiday Inn meeting with nine CBRM councilors and the mayor on Wednesday — a meeting the Post no doubt found out about the same way everyone else in the CBRM did,Read More

Mayor Cecil Clarke and the CBRM council will meet port promoter Albert Barbusci on Wednesday afternoon in what was supposed to have been a secret session between 1:30 PM and 3:30 PM at the Holiday Inn. Barbusci, of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), flew into Sydney Monday night, according toRead More

One of the (many) messed up aspects of our access to information system here in Nova Scotia is that responses to municipal FOIPOP inquiries are not made public, unlike federal and provincial responses, which are published online. Fortunately, some civic-minded Cape Bretoners share the results of their municipal FOIPOPs withRead More

Eating (some) crow I received a detailed response to last week’s Fast & Curious from CBC Cape Breton Information Morning panelist Stephen Tobin of the Horizon Achievement Centre. He took issue (see what I did there?) with my critique of his list of Nova Scotia mayors who remained in office whileRead More

Rail Schmail Do my eyes deceive me, or has even the Cape Breton Post become a bit skeptical about the great Sydney container port project? All it took was port developer Albert Barbusci suddenly playing down the importance of a functioning railway to their project. As the paper reported Thursday:Read More

Editor’s Note: The following article was produced with the Halifax Examiner, via our Joint Investigative Fund.   Upgrading the Sydney to Truro rail line to make it capable of handling double-stacked containers won’t come cheap, according to a study just completed for the Port of Sydney Development Corporation, but the fixRead More

In my story last week on Sydney’s potential as a transshipment hub, I treated the Port of Sydney container terminal project and the Melford container terminal project in the Strait of Canso as though they were interchangeable. Richie Mann, the former provincial cabinet minister and Richmond MLA who now servesRead More