The one-page card, featuring a photo of Premier Darrell Dester and Queens MLA Vicki Conrad, will start appearing in South Shore mailboxes this week. It uses Chronicle-Herald headlines to highlight the Dexter Government’s rescue of the financially shaky newsprint mill, contrasting it with a jaundiced appraisal of opposition efforts.

The NDP government is protecting 2,000 jobs with an investment in the mill workers and the Bowater Mersey pulp and paper mill in Queens County by targeting help in training, energy efficiency, and productivity improvements….

During difficult times, the people of the South Shore stood together. And I am proud to say the Government of Nova Scotia stood right there with you. — Premier Darrell Dexter

But those opposition scoundrels?

The Liberals and Tories are still doing old-style politics.

They are opposing the deal to save 2000 jobs.

But they won’t put forward a plan of their own.

That’s just wrong.

Ouch. Could this be the first volley in the 2012 election campaign?

… there is no evidence that our region can survive under the current governance structure in Nova Scotia

and

It’s not survivable for businesses and it’s not even survivable for families impacted to have that level of taxation burden with less than half the service levels. It is corrosive to the entire community.

In a leader titled “The Eternal Pessimist,” the Post nailed the destructive impact of the mayor’s  constant whining:

[T]he picture he’s painting is not only negative, it’s untrue. Many local businesses and families are not only surviving, they’re thriving, despite paying higher taxes and having access to fewer services than residents of the provincial capital.

Morgan calls that putting “a positive spin on what is unfolding.” But it’s not spin, it’s the truth.

Undoubtedly, some businesses and families are struggling. Would it help if more government jobs were located in Cape Breton? Yes. Would it help if the province distributed more equalization money to the municipalities? Arguably, but that would mean less money in the provincial coffers, so something would likely be cut.

What Morgan doesn’t seem to understand — or chooses to ignore — is that a mayor can pursue more equalization money and government jobs without alienating others and without the perpetual public pessimism. His version of equalization fundamentalism might help get him re-elected, but it’s not helping the region. His attitude is “corrosive.”

This is a mayor whose administration has not lured a single job-producing enterprise to Cape Breton, and who squandered at least half a million civic dollars on a doomed legal challenge that never had any hope at success—except the “success” of  persuading gullible voters that the mayor was a scrapper in their corner.

Some scrapper. Some corner.

The format of a standard business card is so inherently boring, it cries out for creative embellishment. In place of the usual 2×3-inch card, games inventer Will Wright (SimCity) hands out worthless paper currency stamped with his contact information.

This bill, which Wright recently gave The Atlantic’s technical editor Alexis Madrigal, happens to be from Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists. Fittingly, it features electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla. (That’s the blurred-out stamp on the right-hand side.)

Why didn’t we think of that, dear reader?

H/T: Alexis Madrigal

H/T: Charlie Phillips

In a call to CBC-Cape Breton last week, North Shore resident David Papazian spoke a widely held but rarely voiced opinion about the $38 million project to dredge Sydney Harbor in hopes that someone will build container terminal here:

The money could be much better spent fostering small business here in Cape Breton which is a much better engine of growth than these sort of mega-projects that require huge amounts of capital at the taxpayers’ expense, with a whole lot of expectations and dreams and hopes that — maybe not, but very likely — will become another chapter in the probably fairly long history of frustrated economic development here in Cape Breton.

Here’s the whole call:

Papazian mixes up his geography a bit — the alternative terminal is at Melford, not Guysborough Town — but his broad strokes echo private assessments I’ve heard in Halifax and Ottawa: The Halifax terminals are loping along well below capacity, and the proposed Melford terminal is well ahead of Sydney’s in the planning pipeline.

But support from CBRM Mayor John Morgan, CPC candidate Cecil Clarke, and various business and community development interests gave the project sacred cow status that no one wants to buck.

However, an Air Canada employee has argued forcefully that Sydney Airport (now called J. A. Douglas McCurdy Airport) “has extremely high fees and rents even for a Canadian Airport.”

I challenged my correspondent for specifics, and he responded:

I called the YQY airport and asked how much it cost to land an airplane. There does not seem to be anything published. [An employee] said it was $6.97 per 1,000 kgs. up to 20,000 kgs. and $8.80 per 1,000 after 20,000 kgs. Abbotsford, BC,  charges $2.82 per 1,000 kgs.*

Air Canada’s fees are governed by a contract, but I bet anything it cost three times what it would to land in YQY over any comparable airport.

A Dash 8 weights in the range of 15000 kgs, so if this logic follows it would add $100 per flight. [Not sure about my correspondent's math. I make it about $900 more to land in Sydney than Abbotsford, or roughly $23 per round trip ticket at full capacity of 39 passengers. - PD]  The parking fees and terminal fees are also rumoured to be much higher. We also pay for the right to park equipment such as loaders, air-starters, and the like on the tarmac.

Airport rent has been discussed to death in other venues so I will not repeat what has been said, but it costs a fortune to keep offices in YQY.

If I buy a ticket from YQY, the Airport Improvement fee (AIF) is $28.75. From YHZ to YQY it’s $23.00.

Everything in YQY is more expensive than it is elsewhere at least on the surface. I toften hear scuttlebutt where staff says YQY is the
most expensive airport in Canada. Suffice to say that YQY is paying through the nose for year-round service. I know that when you fly the planes are full, but in the winter months the planes are just about vacant.

* My correspondent acknowledged the Sydney-Abbotsford comparison is not apples-to-apples, because Abbotsford adds on a per-seat charge, which Sydney does not. The writer was not authorized to speak for Air Canada, so I have not used his name.

I’d love to hear The Sydney Airport Authority’s rationale for its high prices, but none of this explains or excuses Air Canada’s screwy practice of charge less for a two- or three-leg flight to St. John’s or Toronto, and more for the first leg only.

Contrarian advises everyone flying between Halifax and Sydney to see if you can save money buy purchasing a longer flight but only using the YQY-YHZ portion.

Airline pricing is a weird science at the best of times. When Porter is whipping Air Canada’s ass out of Toronto Island, as they are at the moment, this drives airline pricing executives to do even weirder things.

But why is it consistently cheaper to fly from Sydney to St. Johns (via Halifax) than from Sydney to Halifax?

To check this claim, I priced one-way Air Canada tickets for a week from today.

From Sydney to Halifax:

From Sydney to St. John’s via Halifax:

Cheapest Sydney to Halifax fare: $259. Cheapest Sydney to Halifax to St. John’s fare: $149. What a deal: Travel almost four times as far (1180 total km. v. 303 km.) and pay 40 percent less.

Is it too much to ask Air Canada to explain why Canada’s national airline continues to gouge Cape Bretoners flying to Halifax? Just Email an explanation, dear Air Canada brass.

I think this was a side effect of a Porter sale. Porter ran 50% off flights from the Island briefly a week or so ago. Air Canada responded (as they do) with a predatory sale on all bookings from same. Evidently their 50% discount hit your ticket all the way to Sydney. Since the Halifax-only booking didn’t involve Toronto Island Airport, it would have remained full(ish) fare. Moral: there are two wronged parties here—the people of Cape Breton and the airline that doesn’t hate you.

Porter is the upstart airline known for its curious, retro habit of treating passengers as welcome guests. Leaving from the Island Airport avoids the time and money wasted getting to and from unspeakable Pearson.

So I made a quick check to see if Air Canada could accommodate me from Toronto Island. To my astonishment, I found the following:

$219.36 is an almost unheard of low fare. As I snapped it up, my flight-savvy friend wondered,  ”What would it cost to buy the Halifax-Sydney leg by itself?” The answer will come as no surprise to Sydney travellers:

The poor sod taking the 50-minute flight from Halifax to Sydney in the most efficient aircraft Air Canada flies will pay $339.24 — more than half again as much as Contrarian paid to fly all the way from Toronto to Sydney, on an itinerary that included the same YHZ-YQY flight. The guy flying from Halifax pays $1.11 per kilometer; I paid 14 cents per kilometer.

I’m not quick to pull the regulation trigger, but the way Air Canada abuses its monopoly on the lucrative Halifax-Sydney run to gouge Cape Breton residents, business people, and tourists is crystal clear to everyone but the Competition Bureau and Transport Canada.

What gives? Does anyone have anything to say about all this procrastination? This seems a ridiculous waste of time and perfectly good space. Does no-one in power find this unacceptable? Can no-one get these projects rolling?

And, why, I ask, if these are private developers, are they dependent on government hand-outs? Has this just become the standard way of operating in this province? Yet, it seems to me, that business interests, and the right-leaning public refuse to accept, or give any break whatsoever, to governments who want to give so-called hand-outs to the “small citizens” who really need it to live. But it seems they are fine with corporate hand-outs (while usually denying that they exist) to build projects often of questionable need, and dubious design (it would seem to some).

What’s wrong with this picture, Nova Scotia?! Perhaps we really ARE as backward and stupid as some in the rest of Canada think we are! Even so, is it necessary for us to make it so easy for some people to claim this? I can only shake my head at the things that go on – or fail to go on – here.

I don’t know, but perhaps Ms. Lindsay should keep an eye on the Chamber of Commerce this morning where, according to media reports, Defence Minister Peter MacKay will announce $47 million in federal funding for Joe Ramia’s controversy-drenched Halifax Convention Centre. That’s on top of $56 million each from the province and the city.

So maybe,  just maybe, developers who aren’t being showered with government subsidies don’t appreciate having to compete for tenants against a developer who is.

Just a thought.