Peter McIsaac, chief of the Cape Breton Regional Police Service (CBRPS), revealed this week that he is leaving his post after a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). McIsaac , who has been on medical leave since July 2019, told the CBC’s Tom Ayers that he’s come to understand he’sRead More

Editor’s Note: I’m using this week’s Fast & Curious to cover some items from Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting. Your regular, more random, Fast & Curious will return next week.   All in the Family Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting began with Mayor Amanda McDougall explaining that council had just met inRead More

FOIPOP Update It’s been over two months — 71 days, to be exact — since Nova Scotia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Tricia Ralph recommended the CBRM release 890 pages of documents to me in response to a 2015, port-related, access to information request. Of those pages, 28 had been previouslyRead More

Happy New Year, spectators! I’m easing back into regular publication today with this one article. Full disclosure: I had expected to spend this week poring over documents released by the CBRM in response to my 2015 FOIPOP request. I knew I wouldn’t receive all 890 pages Privacy Commissioner Tricia RalphRead More

I learned a few things from the discussion of my 2015 FOIPOP application during last night’s CBRM council meeting. I learned that Jim Gogan of Breton Law Group handled my initial request in 2015 and is now handling the review. Regional solicitor Demetri Kachafanas revealed this in response to aRead More

I ran across this ad for a CBRM Communications/Information Officer in the course of researching this week’s treatise on access to information. The closing date for applications is tomorrow — November 19 — so there’s still time for any of you not daunted by the list of 21 — TWENTY-ONERead More

Hired guns CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s executive assistant Mark Bettens (he of the exorbitant travel expenses) and spokesperson Sheilah MacDonald have taken paid vacation to work on Clarke’s re-election campaign. I confirmed this with CAO Marie Walsh this week. There’s nothing to stop them doing this — other than theRead...

This, I have decided, is a story about how difficult it can be for citizens to have their voices heard in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. It begins in August 2019, when the province announced its intention to move the NSCC Marconi Campus to the Sydney waterfront. The land earmarkedRead More

I do not know what to make of Monday’s “pretend” budget-cutting workshop but I suspect it may be viewed in some quarters as a poor use of a cash-strapped municipality’s resources. To recap: as a prelude to the actual budget process this year, CBRM council held a session on MondayRead More

Welcome to the penultimate installment of “Where’s Cecil?” For eight months, I’ve attempted to track our peripatetic CBRM mayor as he was “criss-crossing the province” and “burning up the phone lines” in pursuit of the job he really wants: leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives. I started this feature because,Read More