Richard Starr had already got me thinking about how centralized power is in Nova Scotia before Auditor General Kim Adair drove the point home for me on Tuesday. Starr has been tracking this province’s anti-democratic tendencies for some time now via his Starr’s Point blog, and back in early November,Read More

Nothing ventured… This week, I have a question for you: Women in this province have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. You want to help them. Do you: A) invest $5 million in an early-stage venture capital fund focused on women-led startups; B) tear $5 million into tiny shreds andRead More

The McNeil Show As I write this morning, I’ve been watching Premier Stephen McNeil set a land-speed record for opening and closing a session of the Nova Scotia legislature. In addition to worrying about the Lieutenant Governor (who sounds like he ranks among those at highest risk from COVID), I’veRead More

Equality I have three things I want to link together here and I have to do it quickly before I forget one (or more) of them: 1. During his “fireside” chat at the Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce this week, Premier Stephen McNeil declared that he had no interestRead More

Seo muc The title of this item is Scots Gaelic for “This is a pig,” a phrase I just learned via a language app on my phone. I have always wanted to learn Gaelic and this just might be my ticket — I am a ridiculously competitive person and thisRead More

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil is on yet another pilgrimage to China as I write, “engaging” with the Chinese rather than isolating them because, according to what he told reporters just prior to his departure, that’s how you show non-democracies “what democracies have to offer.” At first I thought heRead More

Sino-Nova Scotian relations I honestly don’t know what to make of Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil’s apparently chummy relations with China at a time when Canada and the People’s Republic are barely speaking (and Port of Sydney promoter Albert Barbusci has been cruelly abandoned by his Chinese backers, a factRead More

Cone of Silence I’ve been thinking about the way Stephen McNeil has been quietly turning out the lights in any room in which his government might be held accountable to the public. Just this week, for instance, the Liberals limited the number of times the public accounts committee will meetRead 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

In a “classical” [private-public-partnership or P3], a government typically uses a consortium of private sector firms to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain some new physical public infrastructure. Despite the increasing use of [P3]s, evidence shows that many [P3]s have produced unsatisfactory outcomes, including high transaction costs and project bankruptcy.Read More