On 3 July 2015, over a year before I launched the Cape Breton Spectator, I made a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) application to the clerk of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Deborah Campbell — now Deborah Campbell-Ryan — requesting: Any communications between Mayor Cecil Clarke orRead More

Here are some bits and bobs I gleaned from the Ekistics report on relocating the NSCC Marconi Campus to Sydney’s downtown but could not work into Parts I or II (I know, there has to be a more elegant way to introduce this but I am lazy, so have optedRead More

For the last regular edition of the Cape Breton Spectator before Monday’s federal election, I decided to ask each of my regular contributors to submit a question I could pose — along with one of my own — to all the candidates in the Sydney-Victoria and Cape Breton-Canso ridings. SomeRead More

Mary Campbell (me), the editor/publisher of the Spectator, who has complained frequently about the state of the country’s access to information (ATI) system, asked this question of federal candidates in Cape Breton-Canso and Sydney Victoria: A 2017 audit of the federal access to information system (led by Fred Vallance-Jones ofRead More

On Monday, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal dismissed the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s bid to reverse a UARB ruling overturning a CBRM Council decision that green lighted the development of a 211-site, lakeside RV park in Big Pond Centre. That was a lot to pack into a single sentence,Read More

Note: On Friday June 21 I received a revised version of the travel expenses and have updated the totals accordingly — I have also attached the revised travel sheet at the end of the article. In the five months after losing his bid to become leader of the provincial ProgressiveRead More

The CBRM has posted its audited financials from fiscal year 2007-2008 to fiscal year 2017-2018 on the municipal website. From 2010-2011 on, they include travel expenses for elected officials and senior CBRM staff members. I wanted to compare Mayor Cecil Clarke’s travel expenses to those of his predecessor, Mayor JohnRead More

It took me well over the advertised 30 days and cost me $510 but last Friday I finally received the travel and expense data I had requested from the CBRM on 11 April 2019. My exact request was travel and expense data for Mayor Cecil Clarke, his executive assistant MarkRead More

FOIPOP blues Since the dawn of the age of Big Data — hell, since the dawn of the age of Excel spreadsheets — tracking and collating information has become much easier for us humans. Data entry is boring but not difficult, and once entered (whether into a database or aRead More

More BullSHIP? In a bit of revisionist history that would probably secretly impress the government of the People’s Republic of China, Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) CEO Albert Barbusci has erased all mention of the Chinese from his latest Novaporte container terminal press release. I figure the next step willRead More