Complex systems Former Nova Scotia health minister Maureen MacDonald took to Facebook this week to express frustration with some of the recent criticism she’s seen leveled at the province’s healthcare system. She took particular issue with a speech given at a healthcare rally in Halifax by Paula Minnikin, a formerRead More

Richard Uniacke was from a prominent Halifax family which included his brother James, the first Premier of Nova Scotia following the institution of responsible government in 1848. After graduating from law school in 1810, young Richard moved to Cape Breton and in 1814 was appointed Attorney General of the island,Read More

We live in a province that seems to be in a constant struggle to meet its many commitments, not only to healthcare — the one that seems uppermost in the minds of many Nova Scotians — but also to those who must survive on social assistance when Nova Scotia hasRead More

On February 11, the government of Nova Scotia announced it was “pleased to see” that “Nova Scotia’s economic outlook continues to be positive.” The joy, expressed in a press release from Finance and Treasury Board Minister Karen Casey, was sparked by Statistics Canada’s January Labour Force Survey which showed theRead More

First, the good news: The Statistics Canada graph appeared in a Bloomberg story that attributed the reduction in child poverty directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s child benefit program, which was worth $25 billion to Canadian families in 2017 up from $19 billion in 2015. Statistics Canada itself says: InRead More

Cecil Clarke is not the only anti-carbon tax politician in the current landscape; in fact, he’s arguably just the homegrown version of a familiar figure on the political scene — the “Canadian conservative” who, as Dalhousie economist Lars Osberg puts it, has “successfully framed” the federal government’s carbon-pricing system as aRead More

Bill Lahey’s prescription was sweeping: “We need a new paradigm to manage our forests.” That’s what the University of King’s College president told journalists after handing the McNeil government the results of a year-long review of forestry practices in Nova Scotia. McNeil appointed Lahey last August after choosing not toRead...

A few weeks ago, when I reported on the provincial government’s “redevelopment” plan for Cape Breton Healthcare, I noted that it called for the transfer of surgeries currently performed in the Northside General and New Waterford Consolidated Hospitals (both of which are scheduled for closure) to the Cape Breton RegionalRead More

Sydney-Victoria figured in a Canadian Top-10 list this week but it’s nothing to celebrate: we’re one of the 10 federal ridings with the highest levels of child poverty in the country. The list is found in the latest report from Campaign 2000, a Canadian anti-poverty group that takes its nameRead More

Back in January, I wrote about the town of Bar Harbor, Maine, and its plans to purchase and develop its disused ferry terminal. I was struck by the story, which I first read in the New York Times, because the approach Bar Harbor is taking to the project contrasts so sharplyRead More