The feasibility of developing a terminal for the world’s largest container ships in Sydney harbor is something you’d think the proponents would probably want to determine relatively early on in the process and yet, by 2014 — after the $38 million dredging of the harbor — the port team hadRead More

Remember CBRM’s sister city, the Chinese port city of Dalian? I don’t blame you if you’ve forgotten, the relationship never really amounted to much and we basically stopped talking about it after our sister city (population: 6 million) sentenced a Canadian to death in 2019. But back in December 2015,Read More

In putting a timeframe of 1 December 2013 to 29 June 2015 on my access to information request, I’d hoped to cast my net wide enough capture the earliest communications between port promoters Barry Sheehy and Albert Barbusci and CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke, and if I haven’t done so, I thinkRead More

One Saturday in May 2015, Albert Barbusci woke up and realized: a) HPDP’s “silk road strategy” needed to include Israel and; b) Casino magnate, Republican megadonor and staunch Israel supporter Sheldon Adelson needed to hook them up with an Israeli sister city and an introduction to the Israeli shipping line,Read 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

Operating on the “better late than never” principle, I thought I’d discuss the Nova Scotia government’s decision to continue subsidizing the disused Cape Breton portion of the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia (CBNS) short-line railway. In case you’ve just tuned in to this soap opera, the province has beenRead More

Discovering, thanks to the reporting of Rick Grant, that the CBRM mayor and council are holding a secret meeting today with port developer Albert Barbusci sends a chill up my spine. The meeting is being held at the Holiday Inn to avoid the bother of calling a special in cameraRead More

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...

Whatever else our port promoters Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) have been up to these past few months, they’ve finally cleaned up their internet presence. These quotes, for example, have been removed from their revamped web page: They’ve also changed their logo. From this: To this: I could say moreRead More

Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: you’re going to give me your cell phones and I’m going to lock you in this room and let you read this article. You can take notes, but I’m going to take them away from you when you’re done and burn them becauseRead More