Discovering, thanks to the reporting of Rick Grant, that the CBRM mayor and council are holding a secret meeting today with port developer Albert Barbusci sends a chill up my spine. The meeting is being held at the Holiday Inn to avoid the bother of calling a special in cameraRead More

Eating (some) crow I received a detailed response to last week’s Fast & Curious from CBC Cape Breton Information Morning panelist Stephen Tobin of the Horizon Achievement Centre. He took issue (see what I did there?) with my critique of his list of Nova Scotia mayors who remained in office whileRead More

Rail Schmail Do my eyes deceive me, or has even the Cape Breton Post become a bit skeptical about the great Sydney container port project? All it took was port developer Albert Barbusci suddenly playing down the importance of a functioning railway to their project. As the paper reported Thursday:Read More

Port pay I always want to know what takes place at CBRM council in camera meetings, but I REALLY wish I’d been a fly on the wall for Tuesday’s discussion about renewing Port of Sydney CEO Marlene Usher’s $200,000 a year contract. Usher, once second in command at Enterprise Cape BretonRead More

Editor’s Note: The following article was produced with the Halifax Examiner, via our Joint Investigative Fund.   Upgrading the Sydney to Truro rail line to make it capable of handling double-stacked containers won’t come cheap, according to a study just completed for the Port of Sydney Development Corporation, but the fixRead...

Here’s the most damning line from the CBRM’s response to a FOIPOP request for information about a recent trip to China by Mayor Cecil Clarke and three CBRM staffers. Municipal Clerk Deborah Campbell Ryan told the applicant: I have been advised that CBRM does not have any records relating toRead More

Eyking (and Clarke!) in China As reported in last week’s Fast & Curious, I requested a copy of Sydney-Victoria MP Mark Eyking’s itinerary from his recent trip to China. I received a response from his office which I am pleased to share with you today. Eyking’s assistant Elizabeth Arsenault sentRead More

Excuse the clickbait headline. I was sitting here trying to decide how to structure a report on last night’s public consultation session on a Cape Breton Regional Municipal (CBRM) Charter and it struck me that limiting myself to five notable items might help me focus on what matters. So hereRead More

In my story last week on Sydney’s potential as a transshipment hub, I treated the Port of Sydney container terminal project and the Melford container terminal project in the Strait of Canso as though they were interchangeable. Richie Mann, the former provincial cabinet minister and Richmond MLA who now servesRead More

Respect to District 2 Councilor Earlene MacMullin for trying to get some accountability and transparency on the Port of Sydney file during last night’s general committee meeting. On one level, she succeeded: I’ve been puzzled as to when, exactly, council tapped Mayor Cecil Clarke to head that file and lastRead More