Estragon: I can’t go on like this. Vladimir: That’s what you think. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot   Part II: Four Ways to Change the Local World   Proposal #1: A CBRM Citizens’ Assembly on COVID-19 & Post-Pandemic Recovery “Watershed periods in history,” Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1992, “mayRead 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

Editor’s Note: Equalization has colonized a lot of space on the Op-Ed pages of the Cape Breton Post lately (and here in the Spectator too). Personally, I’m just delighted to see the issue get an airing — I feel like it got stored away in a cupboard when former CBRMRead More

Dear Premier McNeil: I am writing with regard to the issue of the Nova Scotia government’s distribution of the Federal Equalization Transfers,  public concern over which has now reached a critical level here on Cape Breton Island, and in other non-metropolitan areas of the province. I was part of aRead...

As rural Nova Scotians are left trying to economically survive on their own, it should be noted that over the past two decades (1999-2019) the Nova Scotia government received over $30,000,000,000 ($30 billion) in equalization payments from the federal government. Based on government data – some of which the governmentRead More

Equalize this Developments on the equalization front this week must be gratifying to the stalwart members of Nova Scotians for Equalization Fairness (NSEF), a CBRM-based advocacy group that has been meeting monthly to discuss the issue of municipal financing for 15 long years. Against the backdrop of budget discussions, whichRead More