As kids, we weren’t very impressed by our mother’s “war stories” of walking six miles to school after feeding the chickens and having a big bowl of porridge (she hated it so much we were never forced to eat it). She didn’t talk too much about her life as aRead More

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality has more police officers than it can afford. Don’t look at me, I’m not the one who said it—it’s the considered opinion of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality Task Force, or The Mayor’s Task Force, a group formed in 2013 to “make recommendations regarding theRead More

In July 2011, Elaine Power wrote a scathing account of food banks in The Globe and Mail, declaring “they have become a serious obstacle in the fight against poverty” and “it was time to close them down.” Power, at the time an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology andRead More

It just isn’t funny anymore Dr StrangeJob is angry! Every level of government—federal, provincial and municipal—is currently under scrutiny for questionable spending of taxpayer dollars: the recent federal staff relocation reimbursements, the latest provincial MLA frivolous self-promotional kitsch, the Guysborough County expense scandal and the ombudsman’s Richmond County expense claimRead More

Is there a link between poverty and public health? “Definitely,” says Monika Dutt, a family doctor and medical officer of health with the Nova Scotia Health Authority in the CBRM. “It’s always been there, but I think now there’s more and more evidence to really show there is a clearRead More

I had intended to update my payday loans story when I heard back from the provincial government and the local Sydney credit union on the subject. If you read the original piece, you’ll know much of it was devoted to a consideration of pilot projects being tested by credit unionsRead More

I’ve been reading a document from the Tamarack Institute this week. It’s called 10—A Guide for Cities Reducing Poverty and it was presented during the Cities Reducing Poverty: When Mayors Lead conference in Edmonton in February. I borrowed CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s copy. (JUST KIDDING! He didn’t attend. I haveRead More

Budget Hack is a recurring series in which the author takes money from one part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality Budget and puts it where she feels it can do more good. All attendant flak should be directed at the author, not the people whose causes she supports. InRead More

  And…he’s off! CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke has fired his starter’s pistol and burst from the gates like a lone horse on a winter racetrack, taking a commanding lead in the 2016 mayoral election by beginning his run in 2015. He informed the public of his decision to re-offer byRead More