I am not a gambling man, but I bet the good citizens of CBRM will find it in their hearts to forgive me. As you may be aware, Dr StrangeJob is an active member of Incompetents Anonymous (IA), the world’s first 12+1 step self-help group. IA does for the incompetentRead More

The great $37 million Sydney harbor dredge was completed between October 2011 and January 2012. Over 4 million cubic meters of sedimentary material was removed from a 9-kilometer stretch of harbor channel in less than four months using trailing suction hopper dredge technology as opposed to traditional “clam bucket” dredgeRead More

Joe Ward, author of The Councillors’ Pledge, is running for Councillor in District 7. That’s right, the guy who wrote the councilor rule book and coerced incumbent and wannabe councilors to play by his rules has entered the political game. Is that fair? Isn’t that like the developer of PokémonRead More

Sadly, I had a bit of a slip and my final pledge went down the crapper, so I am changing strategy to tackle my 1000 More Implausible Elect-Me Promises. In retrospect, 1000 promises may be a bit ambitious. Rather than publish a rambling list of irrelevant promises, I will critiqueRead More

Love is in the air, folks! And all over the front page of the Saturday Cape Breton Post. If you turned off your critical brain and simply let it wash over you, you could respond with a doting smile and best wishes for the bride and…mayor. Yeah, my critical brainRead More

Did anyone else search Page 3 of the Saturday 27 August edition of the Cape Breton Post for the notice, “This message has been approved by the campaign to re-elect Cecil Clarke?” I searched in vain, assuming there could be no other explanation for the non-story that occupied most ofRead More

There will be a mayoral race in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality this fall and I for one, am glad. That’s partly because acclamations are no fun—who wants to watch incumbent Cecil Clarke debate himself?—but mostly because I don’t think they’re particularly healthy for a functioning democracy. Instead, Rankin MacSween,Read More

Dr. StrangeJob has not fallen off the wagon since starting the pledge last week, so he is still hoping to catch the CBRM gravy-train. Since Joe Citizen’s CBRM Councillors’ Pledge continues to raise a stink with CBRM taxpayers, there is now talk about a new rank in council. Hence, theRead More

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality has been doing a much better job of submitting audited financial statements to the province on deadline each year. I know this because CBRM CFO Marie Walsh answered my queries — as did the spokesperson for the Nova Scotia department of municipal affairs — andRead More

Business Cape Breton (BCB) CEO Eileen Lannon Oldford left a special meeting of the CBRM council on 8 June 2016 in triumph—council had not only agreed that the CBRM should declare BCB its economic development arm, it had awarded the group a $115,000* “sustainability” grant to hang baskets of flowersRead More