There were ructions at CBRM Council yesterday and I was there to witness some of them. It all started at a 4:00PM in camera session, held under Section 22 (2) e of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) which allows municipal councils to go behind closed doors to discuss “contract negotiations.”Read...

What is it about CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke and December? Does he hear that John Lennon song — And so this is Christmas/And what have you done? — and panic? Does he look at his lists of 200 “positive changes” for the municipality and scream? Because at a time whenRead More

I have a confession to make: I did not watch the full CBRM council meeting last night. I watched (with interest) the discussion of the proposed RV Park in Big Pond. (I spend my summers in Irish Cove, just a little further west along Route 4, so anything that happensRead More

Editor’s Note: This is the first in what will be a series of articles on Cape Breton and immigration.  CBRM District 8 Councilor Amanda McDougall thinks Cape Breton needs its own Nominee Program for immigrants and on October 16th, she shared that opinion with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on CitizenshipRead More

Writing about wastewater earlier this year, I raised the possibility that CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke might not be worried about meeting a December 2020 deadline associated with new federal wastewater regulations because he’s already announced he won’t be seeking a third term — which means he will bid us farewellRead More

I begin with a caveat: I watched the CBRM Council livestream from 4:35 yesterday afternoon to 9 PM last night, at which point, I surrendered and switched to Netflix. I consider this a sign of weakness on my part — but I also blame whoever scheduled the economic planning andRead More

Remember when Harbor Port Development Partners (HPDP) changed its name to Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) and pressured CBRM council into extending its contract with the municipality for five years? It was last December, seven months ago, when the port file was so hot, what with terminal operator Ports AmericaRead More

Information is a valuable commodity in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) — so valuable it’s kept under lock and key and even our elected representatives have trouble accessing it. Take the way the Port of Sydney Development Corporation (PSDC) has been paying its “partners” in a hoped-for container terminal development,Read More

It’s Wednesday and you know what that means — time to beat the Business Cape Breton (BCB) drum! This week we’ve learned that BCB is both an outside organization immune to the rules governing departments of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality AND the CBRM’s “economic development entity,” immune to theRead More

You know that really annoying stage toddlers hit at about age two? When no matter what you tell them, they say, “Why?” I never outgrew it. So when CBRM mystery solicitor Jim Gogan appeared at Tuesday’s nominating committee meeting to discuss changes to the Articles of Association of the Port ofRead More