The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM) has digested months of hearings, testimony from 55 witnesses and briefs from 11 individuals or organizations into a final report on Atlantic Canadian immigration. The report itself has 24 recommendations but there is also a “dissenting opinion” from the Conservative membersRead More

Jody Dukart is the Auditor/Teller for Canada of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), a position he took up in October 2017, following the retirement of Cape Breton’s Bobby Burchell. Although the Donkin coal mine re-opened by Kameron Coal Management is famously non-union (it’s owned by the Cline GroupRead More

She was probably 18 years old, had moved to Sydney from Antigonish, and with a Grade 10 education, applied for what were called “domestic” jobs — maids or housekeepers — that offered not only work, but often a place to live. Luckily for her, she landed such a job withRead More

Port secrecy CBRM Council met in secret camera on Thursday to discuss something related to the Port of Sydney. Under the Municipal Government Act (MGA), which our mayor sometimes worries about and sometimes doesn’t (see the 31 unannounced in camera meetings held over 22 months in 2014-15 in flagrant violationRead More

My cat recently died. Although his life was relatively long (for a cat, anyway) and, I would like to believe, very happy, his death was sudden and unexpected and has left me feeling deeply bereft. I keep expecting to hear his meow at the door or see his intelligent faceRead More

The Calculus of Cold As part of my Northern Immersion experience, my daughter and I keep Nunavut CBC on all the time. This means that more than 50% of the programming is in Inuktitut, a language said to be the second most difficult in the world to learn, next toRead More

FOIPOP Follies For the record: I received the response to my freedom of information/protection of privacy (FOIPOP) request to the NS Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (TIR) for an “unedited” copy of Neil MacNeil’s rail fees report. I got bupkis. There are a couple of additional emails not includedRead More

As was noted in Fast and Curious on October 6, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized for its “work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts toRead More

Editor’s Note: In a shining example of cooperation between independent news sources, the Spectator is pleased to present a story from this week’s Victoria Standard. If you like what you read, consider subscribing — you can even get a paper version.   With federal legalization of recreational cannabis less thanRead More

Fr. Lloyd Dwyer, who passed away two weeks ago, was a man who made an impression on the many people whose paths he crossed during an interesting and meaningful life. Born in New Glasgow in 1931, one of seven children of John and Catherine Murphy, he graduated from Normal CollegeRead More