The Senate expense scandal, and the government's malodorous handling of it, has given new life to shopworn nostrums for reforming or eliminating Canada's maligned upper chamber. All have flaws ranging from severe to fatal. Eliminating the Senate would eliminate sober second thought, that useful brake on the unfettered power of a majority government in the "dictatorship between elections" that is Canadian democracy. Electing the Senate would imbue the upper chamber with legitimacy, empowering it to act much as the U.S. Senate acts, with all the attendant complications for passing legislation. Creating an Equal Senate, with the same number of members from every province,...

13 November, 2013

In an email cri de coeur last week, musician Robert Speirs lambasted Halifax TV newscasters for publishing the names of five men allegedly lured into motel meetings with a police officer they believed to be a a 16-year-old girl. Bill Turpin, former editor of the late lamented Halifax Daily News, makes the case for printing names of people accused of crimes, even bogus crimes concocted to entrap them. I understand Mr. Speirs’ distress over the plight of the men identified as the accused in the on-line child luring case last week and his sense that the media are persecuting them. But publicity...

06 March, 2013

A fresh rumination on feline ennui from vido poet Will Braden. (The original is here.) H/T BT, via Jezebel....

15 April, 2012

Bill Turpin, one of the few Nova Scotians who has both edited a daily newspaper editor and worked as a civil servant, disagrees with my criticism of Evan Solomon for addressing cabinet ministers as "Minister." The use of "Minister" by bureaucrats is not deferential. It's good form used for good reason. The term is a reminder to both parties that they are engaged in a special relationship. It reminds the Minister that she is not merely a politician, but also someone whose job is to direct the civil service in the best interests of the people. It reminds bureaucrats their jobs...

30 October, 2011

Contrarian reader Dave Atkinson writes: Both you and Bill Turpin used the word "fulsomely" to describe an apology. I assume you both know what you're doing. How droll. Bill and I probably knew once, but we, or at least I, forgot. William Safire rises from the dead to remind us. (As a bonus, he throws in "noisome" and "enormity.") [Update] Bill T. didn't forget after all: Sheesh! I've been lectured by Harry Flemming on the use of fulsome, so I chose it with care to describe The Coast's apology, and did so because of its ambiguity. It's nice that Dave Atkinson picked up on it, but...

20 April, 2010

Two readers see The Coast's failure to lift a finger in defense of its reader-posters not as an unwelcome blow to free expression but as an overdue comeuppance for the well-known excesses of anonymous Internet posting. Bill Turpin writes: The Coast's greatest failure to its readers was in allowing anonymous posts in the first place. It's The Coast, not Samizdat, and this is Canada, not the former Soviet Union. You're free to write what you want in this country, subject to defamation laws which, while imperfect, are not odious. There is no need to hide behind an alias. But when you do,...

19 April, 2010