I watched the (rather heated) debate that took place on February 28 during a Public Hearing on the municipality’s proposed new Passenger Vehicle for Hire By-law, intended to replace the existing Taxi By-law. I want to do three things this week: consider the issue that has some taxi owners allRead More

Editor’s Note: When I realized I would be publishing this year on the 41st anniversary of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, I decided to reprint this piece from 2022—the preface to Susan Dodd’s 2012 book, The Ocean Ranger: remaking the promise of oil, with permission from Fernwood Books.  Read More

On Tuesday, the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the following eight defendants: Edward Constantin aka MrZackMorris aka Edward Constantinescu Perry Matlock aka PJ Matlock Thomas Cooperman aka Tommy Coops Gary Deel aka Mystic Mac MitchellRead More

I don’t know enough about golf to begin with an appropriate golf reference, so please insert whatever the golf equivalent of “catch-up football” is here, because that’s what I’m playing—I missed the Notice of Defence filed by the defendants in a lawsuit launched by the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency (ACOA)Read More

Pick a lane? I live in the North End of Sydney and on a day a week or so ago when there were three cruise ships in port, I had a sudden vision of the area as a pedestrian-only district. It sounds crazy, I know, because at the moment, theRead More

During the period covering the offences, the accused filed false GST returns claiming a combined refund of $20,628,805. Of that amount, the CRA paid $275,960 in refunds and allocated an additional $81,399 as a credit to other amounts owing to the agency, meaning the family and their companies were paidRead More

Editor’s Note: I’ve added new items to the timeline below, but my real update can be found in this new article, for which I’ve written a new introduction. Rather than repeat myself, I thought I’d let the old intro stand because it still serves a purpose: it explains why IRead More

There have been some developments—none that could be considered good—in the Bridging Finance story. As you will recall, the local angle on this tale of a Toronto-based private debt lender in receivership is that Membertou Corporate borrowed $6.8 million from Bridging to invest in Albert Barbusci’s Sydney harbor container terminalRead More

My snapshot of the current cruise industry (see part one here) would be sadly wanting if I failed to note that Princess Cruise Lines, fined a record $40 million in 2017 for what the US Department of Justice called “environmental crimes,” has failed to mend its wicked ways. The 2017Read More

Courthouse Dreams We discovered during budget talks on Tuesday that CBRM is considering the possibility  of turning the former Cape Breton County courthouse in Wentworth Park into the new central library. I am trying not to get my hopes up too high as I write this because there are aRead More