Having watched CBRM council discuss a proposed district energy project for Downtown Sydney last night, I would say regular readers of the Spectator know more about this project than councilors do. I’ve been following it, as best I can, since it first appeared on my radar in January 2020 —Read More

Green Hydrogen Remember when I took you on that guided tour of the new Novaporte website? (Honestly, I don’t blame you if you’ve suppressed the memory.) We spent some time pondering the claim that the adjacent Novazone logistics park will be a “green energy hub” with “planned hydrogen facilities” thatRead More

A district energy system proposed for Downtown Sydney has undergone a significant metamorphosis since the last time it was on my radar, in January 2020. This scheme — one of a number of initiatives arising from a partnership between CBRM and Efficiency Nova Scotia that dates to 2015 — hasRead More

Albert Barbusci and Barry Sheehy, the men behind Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) and Novaporte, the Sydney harbor container port project, have splashed out on a new website and what a glossy mix of stock photos and wild claims it is. Before we get into it, though, let’s take aRead More

Editor’s Note: Spectator contributor Paul Strome sent along this open letter to candidates in the upcoming provincial elections, presented as a list of his chief concerns.   Reconciliation and the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are not just federal issues. Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and GirlsRead More

Canada is the only G7 country still emitting GHG emissions way above 1990 levels — 21% above. Compare that to the US, which is on par with its 1990 levels, the 27 EU countries that are 25% below their 1990 levels or the UK, whose emissions are 42% below 1990Read More

Editor’s Note: I’m doing a deep dive into the CBRM’s 2021-22 budget and dragging you with me. Last week, I covered water, roads and facilities. This week, I pick up where I left off, starting with that generator for the police HQ.    As the afternoon session of the AprilRead More

Something the vast majority of Canadians don’t seem to realize is that we, as citizens, are on the hook for cleaning up billions (if not trillions) of dollars’ worth of environmental waste across the country. Industries continue dumping their waste into the laps of citizens, who are completely unaware ofRead More

I‘ve been learning about Appalachia (beginning with how to pronounce it) through a variety of means lately and what keeps jumping out at me are the similarities between that region and our own (by which I mean, variously, Cape Breton, the Maritimes and the Atlantic Provinces). These similarities include theRead More

Ever since reading Linda McQuaig on Connaught Labs — the “public” lab that McQuaig argues, convincingly, could have helped Canada fight the COVID-19 pandemic had it not been privatized by the Mulroney government in the ’80s — I’ve been thinking about the value of publicly owned businesses and looking atRead More