Full disclosure: I thought 2021 was going to be vastly different from 2020 but instead, it unfolded like we’d given 2020 a 12-month extension on its contract. The COVID pandemic continued to loom large in everyone’s lives although, as you’ll see, I modified my response to it. I spent muchRead More

When you’re living in a troubled economy, there’s nothing more interesting than following the money that influenced that economy’s election results. It’s even more interesting when you’re a failed, former candidate from the 2016 municipal CBRM election, who knows all about the donations (or lack thereof), the paperwork, the expenses,Read More

Eureka! As you may recall from Wednesday’s edition, CBRM CAO Marie Walsh assured me I’d be receiving, that very day, the “lion’s share” of the 890 documents I’ve been waiting for as a result of the NS Privacy Commissioner’s ruling on my 2015 FOIPOP request. I received nothing on Wednesday.Read More

Vaccine Dream News that Pfizer has a vaccine that is 90% effective against COVID-19 cheered people and markets alike this past week (airline and cruise line stocks leapt for joy). But there are so many caveats attached to the discovery that I’m pressing pause on my own jig of joyRead More

I read with interest the Post article about municipal candidates filing complaints against the CBRM’s returning officer with the provincial Ombudsman, although the first thing that occurred to me was that a call to declare an election “null and void” would probably have more weight coming from a mayoral candidateRead More

The ballots are counted, the verdict is in — and it’s time to wonk-out with the numbers from Saturday’s municipal election in the CBRM! Amanda McDougall won the CBRM mayor’s race on Saturday, with 47.4% of the overall vote (24,319 votes). McDougall carried nine districts — 3, 4, 5, 6,Read More

The coming of October goes not unheralded. Its harbingers are glorious – yellow, orange and red. They blaze across the hillside and flame against the sky. While summer, like September, has faded with a sigh. October has a beauty and a splendor that are rare. A crayon-colored prelude to November, bleakRead More

The problem with the voter assistance “kiosk” established in Eskasoni First Nation is not that it exists — the CBRM’s Alternative Voting By-law gives Returning Officer Deborah Campbell Ryan the power to establish as many polling locations as she likes (provided she has “at least one”) and to determine whereRead More

Vote often? I spoke this week with a Sydney resident who lives in a household of three registered voters that received five PINs for online or telephone voting in the municipal election. One was for a brother who, she said, has not lived in the house for 18 months, andRead More

The mayor of the CBRM is, on the one hand, just one vote out of 13 on all matters that come before council, and as I’ve noted before in these pages, the position is barely defined in the province’s Municipal Government Act (MGA) which states: “mayor” means the council memberRead More