Previously, on “My FOIPOP Appeal,” I explained to you that in 2015, I made a request to the CBRM for communications related to the decision to give Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), then known as Harbor Port Investment Partners, an exclusive contract to market the Port of Sydney. Roughly 100Read More

Okay, stop: FOIPOP edition Sometime on Tuesday, as I was working away on this week’s edition of the Spectator, I received a notice in my mailbox of what I assumed was a package waiting for me at the Post Office. December packages are usually well worth the trip to theRead More

That headline was misleading. I apologize. I had hoped that by now I would have a response from the CBRM to the Privacy Commissioner’s November 3 ruling about my 2015 FOIPOP request. I knew it was unlikely the municipality would simply accept the ruling and release the 862 pages ofRead More

On 3 July 2015, over a year before I launched the Cape Breton Spectator, I made a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) application to the clerk of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Deborah Campbell — now Deborah Campbell-Ryan — requesting: Any communications between Mayor Cecil Clarke orRead More

Once more to the polls! I have yet to decide how to cover this fall’s municipal elections in the CBRM. Back in 2016 — the year I launched the Spectator  — I chose to focus on the women running for office in part because I am one person and couldRead More

This is a quick follow-up to my October 30 articles about stress and call center jobs, the first of which was basically a review of On the Clock, What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane, by Philadelphia-based journalist Emily Guendelsberger, who took three low-wage jobsRead More

It took me well over the advertised 30 days and cost me $510 but last Friday I finally received the travel and expense data I had requested from the CBRM on 11 April 2019. My exact request was travel and expense data for Mayor Cecil Clarke, his executive assistant MarkRead More

FOIPOP blues Since the dawn of the age of Big Data — hell, since the dawn of the age of Excel spreadsheets — tracking and collating information has become much easier for us humans. Data entry is boring but not difficult, and once entered (whether into a database or aRead More

I FOIPOPed all correspondence between the CBRM planning department and Chris Skidmore — the Calgary-based developer who wants to establish an RV Park in Big Pond Centre — because I thought the planning department seemed to be rather decidedly in Skidmore’s corner on this project and I wanted to knowRead More

More BullSHIP? In a bit of revisionist history that would probably secretly impress the government of the People’s Republic of China, Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) CEO Albert Barbusci has erased all mention of the Chinese from his latest Novaporte container terminal press release. I figure the next step willRead More