I have been wading through pages of documents related to the CBRM and Business Cape Breton (BCB) and the provincial Department of Municipal Affairs (DMA) searching for answers to questions about economic development funding and Glace Bay revitalization and the role of our economic development “entity.” While I still haveRead More

Stealth staffing I heard Kathy Bell, director of primary health care, chronic disease and family practice with the Nova Scotia Health Authority, tell the CBC’s Yvonne LeBlanc-Smith on Thursday that while she was happy to announce Cape Breton would be receiving seven nurse practitioners, she was not at liberty to sayRead More

Leaving? So soon? It seems the CBRM’s chief administrative officer (CAO) Michael Merritt is hightailing it back from whence he came. Merritt was hired in July 2014 and began work in October of that year, so when he leaves in April he won’t even have been on the job a fullRead More

Editor’s note: As you may have noticed, Fast & Curious is being published on a Friday. It’s an experiment to see if it a) works for my readers and b) works for me. Feel free to send me your thoughts.   Port Hawkesbury Man Does it really make sense toRead More

Remember that brief swirl of controversy around the mysterious renaming of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s Civic Centre to “City Hall?” A front-page story in the Cape Breton Post on March 6 saying the issue would be on the agenda of that day’s General Committee Meeting (placed there by District 6Read More

On 8 June 2016, at a “special” CBRM Council meeting, Mayor Cecil Clarke surprised councilors with the announcement that the CBRM had withdrawn from Regional Enterprise Network (REN) 6, an economic development organization incorporated in October 2014 and including the CBRM, Richmond County, Victoria County and Inverness County. CBRM councilors,Read More

This week I checked the Nova Scotia Tender Notices website and discovered the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) is in the market for a number of things, including external auditors. The lucky winners will get to audit the CBRM, the CBRM Water Utility and — what fun! — the PortRead More

Last March, a CBRM citizen decided he (or she, I’m not sure, so I’m just going to refer to him/her as “The Citizen”) wanted to know more about the expenses of Mayor Cecil Clarke, Port CEO Marlene Usher, CBRM Chief Administrative Officer Michael Merritt, the mayor’s executive assistant Mark BettensRead More

The great $37 million Sydney harbor dredge was completed between October 2011 and January 2012. Over 4 million cubic meters of sedimentary material was removed from a 9-kilometer stretch of harbor channel in less than four months using trailing suction hopper dredge technology as opposed to traditional “clam bucket” dredgeRead More

  I was very interested to read this profile of Abraham Somavarapha, the new business development manager at the Port of Sydney Development Corporation, in the January 22nd edition of the Cape Breton Post. I do not know Somavarapha nor do I have reason to think he is anything otherRead More