A failed Nova Scotia NDP leader for leader of the national NDP? Hasn't that been tried before? I don't know what he's up to. Certainly not hoping to become leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Raising his personal profile? For what? Consolidating regional delegates in case of a brokered convention? To what end? The whole thing strikes me as an exercise in misplaced vanity....
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...
Professors of journalism or public relations would do well to save a copy of today's episode of CBC Radio's "The House" for a classic example of how a politician can use talking points to hornswoggle an overly deferential interviewer. At about 14 minutes into the program, Evan Solomon asks International Trade Minister Ed Fast an obvious question about the recent spate of US protectionist measures aimed at Canada: Why are you being caught off guard by these sudden protectionist measures coming out of the US? Fast responded with a set of talking points so scripted, you can almost hear him rhyming off the bullets: We’re focused...
I won't presume that Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, poster child for the Harper government's plan to kill the long gun registry, was purposely being nasty when she referred to citizens who oppose the registry as “good salt-of-the-earth people," "upstanding citizens who work hard," and parents whose children "probably aren’t involved in gangs in the streets.” But I wish she would take a moment to consider how offensive her characterizations are. They’re upstanding citizens who work hard. They take their kids and grandkids out hunting and shooting and those kids, by the way, probably aren’t involved in gangs in the streets. These are...
The Canadian Beaver Band offers a jaundiced musical view of Halifax's spankin' new ship contract [possibly NSW]. H/T: Charlie Phillips...
The Cape Breton Post's Chris Shannon has a thorough and detailed account of Environment Canada's failure to monitor or control rampant siltation from the Sydney Harbor dredging boondoggle project (first reported here). In among the buck-passing and not-my-department quotes lies this gem: The federal environmental screening assessment report is supposed to be posted online. But a check of each of the departments’ websites didn’t turn up the report. A spokesperson for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency said the screening report couldn’t be found on its agency’s website either since it doesn’t conduct that type of environmental assessment. “It’s really the responsible authorities that are responsible...
Reporters attending Parks Canada’s Sable Island announcement this morning at the Halifax Citadel were apparently in stenography mode. Or perhaps they had been instructed to fish for soundbites on more urgent stories, like the confusion around environmental and salvage measures for the grounded bulk carrier MV Miner. Whatever the cause, they came ill-prepared to probe the most contentious issue surrounding plans to make Sable Island a national park: the Harper Government’s impulse to promote private sector tourism development on the island. Environment Minister Jim Prentice touched off a furore in January, 2010, when he first announced plans to make Sable a...
A 100-hectare sediment plume kicked up by the Sydney Harbor dredging project, and presumably laden with industrial contaminants, has some officials annoyed over Environment Canada's failure to regulate the project. Gerry Langille, a Sydney-based industrial photographer often used by government agencies, snapped the photos Wednesday in calm conditions at slack tide. They have since circulated widely among federal and provincial bureaucrats. The Google Earth screenshot at left shows the approximate location of the upper photograph. The photo below shows the shoreline at Pt. Edward where the dredged material makes landfall, and where most of the sedimentation appears to originate. The infilled material...
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...
Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out that last week's flood of Steve Jobs hagiographies mostly tiptoed around one inconvenient facet of the Great Man: he took LSD. He not only took it, he regarded having taken it as one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. Greenwald: Unlike many people who have enjoyed success, Jobs is not saying that he was able to succeed despite his illegal drug use; he’s saying his success is in part — in substantial part — because of those illegal drugs (he added that Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once”). An excellent...