Federal

Mixed Progress on Banning ‘The Big One’

Mixed Progress on Banning ‘The Big One’

August 10, 2022 at 12:21 pm

One hears the word and wants to know more, but one also wants to forget it. One has heard both too much and not enough about Hiroshima. For the city evokes our entire nuclear nightmare…  Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) Return to Hiroshima on AugustRead More

Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime News

Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime News

July 27, 2022 at 11:55 am

Summer, I have decided, is a time for experimentation. When the thermometer hits 30 degrees Celsius, the only thing I want to dive deeply into is the Bras d’Or Lake, so this week, I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of covering one topic in depth, I’m goingRead More

Surprise! Everwind Wants Public Money

Surprise! Everwind Wants Public Money

July 27, 2022 at 11:53 am

Green hydrogen first appeared on my radar in May of this year when I heard about Everwind Fuels, a newly formed company with the modest aim of turning Nova Scotia into a regional green hydrogen hub. US-based Everwind, headed by Australian private equity guy Trent Vichie, announced its intentions byRead More

ACOA Tees Up a Lawsuit in Ben Eoin

ACOA Tees Up a Lawsuit in Ben Eoin

July 13, 2022 at 11:38 am

There’s been a development in Ben Eoin and it’s a doozy: the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is suing Ben Eoin Golf Club Limited and 3324714 Nova Scotia Limited, a company connected to Ben Eoin Development Group Inc (BEDGInc), for $3.5 million. Why? Well, according to ACOA’s Notice of Action,Read More

CBRM Council Report

CBRM Council Report

July 13, 2022 at 11:36 am

On the same day last week—July 8—600,000 liters of gasoline spilled out of a storage tank in Sydney’s North End and Rogers Communications showed us why Canada needs not more “competition” in the telecoms sector but a publicly owned internet provider (yes, I went there). I say this off theRead More

Mocking the Tax System?

Mocking the Tax System?

June 29, 2022 at 11:23 am

During the period covering the offences, the accused filed false GST returns claiming a combined refund of $20,628,805. Of that amount, the CRA paid $275,960 in refunds and allocated an additional $81,399 as a credit to other amounts owing to the agency, meaning the family and their companies were paidRead More

How the End of Hero Pay Changed Canadian Law

How the End of Hero Pay Changed Canadian Law

June 29, 2022 at 11:21 am

It’s been just over two years since Canada’s biggest grocery store chains declared the pandemic over and canceled the premium they’d been paying their front-line staff for all of three months. On 13 June 2020, according to the Financial Post: …Canada’s top three grocery chains simultaneously cancelled their $2-per-hour “heroRead More

Electrifying Public Transit News

Electrifying Public Transit News

June 22, 2022 at 11:15 am

District 4 Councilor Steve Gillespie knows the electrification of CBRM’s transit fleet is inevitable as federal funding for diesel buses dries up, but he wants us to understand that he is adamantly opposed to it because it will be expensive and people in his district, who do not have busRead More

Public Money, Private Gain?

Public Money, Private Gain?

June 15, 2022 at 12:36 pm

The Verschuren Centre, once part of Cape Breton University, now a standalone corporation, has received another injection of public money—$6.8 million, to be exact—from the federal and provincial governments. The funding includes: $2.5 million from the provincial government $2 million from ACOA via the Canada Coal Transition Initiative Infrastructure FundRead More

Vice-Admiral Norman/NSS Timeline 2020-2022

Vice-Admiral Norman/NSS Timeline 2020-2022

June 15, 2022 at 12:34 pm

I last updated my Vice-Admiral Mark Norman/National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) timeline back in 2019, but developments these past two weeks have motivated me to revisit it. Norman, you will recall, was the Canadian naval officer charged with one count of breach of trust for: …leaking cabinet secrets in relation toRead More