I was listening to Intercepted, a podcast from The Intercept news outlet, on Wednesday and heard an interview with Emily Guendelsberger, a Philadelphia-based journalist who has written a book called  On the Clock, What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. The interviewer, Jeremy Scahill, explainedRead...

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

Dolores Campbell, the Spectator‘s commentator on social justice issues, asked this question of federal candidates in Cape Breton-Canso and Sydney Victoria: Would your party or, in the case of the independents, you consider establishing a Guaranteed Annual Income for all Canadians that would provide them with at least the basicsRead More

Editor’s Note: The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo sparked a global conflict claiming over 20 million lives. Sean Howard reflects on a momentous centenary receiving remarkably little political or media attention.    Mischief and MadnessRead More

Premier King My interest in the recent PEI election, I will admit, was largely confined to the referendum on moving from a first-past-the-post electoral system to a mixed-member-proportional (MMP) system, which islanders ultimately chose not to do. The success of the Green Party on election night also piqued my interestRead More

You may have noticed that some American billionaires are actually anxious to give away some of those billions to help those who fall, well, billions short of having a half-decent chance at something even close to the good life. Are the guys with the big bucks “bucking for the finals”Read 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

We live in a province that seems to be in a constant struggle to meet its many commitments, not only to healthcare — the one that seems uppermost in the minds of many Nova Scotians — but also to those who must survive on social assistance when Nova Scotia hasRead More

‘Many or several’ A Tuesday night CTV news report about the cruise industry in Cape Breton (opening line: “It seems their ship has come in, once again, for the cruise industry in Cape Breton”), sent me scrambling for my secondary sources. First, because it seemed to contain confirmation that theRead More

I have been thinking a lot about John Rawls’ theory of justice, in part because I am working with a fourth-year student on her honor’s thesis, but also because I’ve been watching the college admissions scandal unfolding in the United States (a scandal I find at once fascinating and appalling).Read More