The Halifax Chronicle-Herald and AllNovaScotia.com, ranking arbiters of mainstream opinion in Nova Scotia, lent editorial support Monday to Mayor Peter Kelly's forcible police removal of peaceful Occupy Nova Scotia protesters. The Herald, in a bracing throwback to its days as the fusty Old Lady of Argyle, approved the eviction in every detail: violence, secrecy, sneakiness, double-dealing, rights-violation, and even Remembrance Day timing. AllNS tried to have it both ways. A commentary* by former-Managing-Editor-turned-United-Church-minister Kevin Cox quibbled with Kelly's timing and secretive decision-making, but endorsed His Worship's position that a vague and rarely enforced municipal bylaw should trump Sections 2. (b), (c),...

15 November, 2011

Province accused of sweetheart dealing — Halifax Metro NDP accused of wasting cash — Chronicle-Herald Chamber: Paving bill will go up — Chronicle-Herald Road builders want government out of paving — Halifax Metro Ideology on the road -- AllNovaScotia A sophisticated lobby by the province's paving contractors appears to have hornswoggled the Halifax media. Correction: the lobby isn't all that sophisticated. Half an hour's research would have debunked the contractors' claim that socialist ideology trumped common sense in government's decision to buy and run its own paving plant. In various forums, the road-builders have argued the province can't possibly pave roads cheaper than they can. There's but...

11 March, 2011

Perhaps this post deserves elaboration. By any measure, dredging Sydney Harbour is a dubious use of public funds. It may yield modest increases in commercial shipping, but dreams of a container terminal here are but a fantasy. Despite the massive boom in world shipping that characterized the 2000s, the two container piers in Halifax continue to limp along at half capacity. Plans for a third pier at Melford are years ahead of those for Sydney, where a putative terminal proponent seems to have vanished. Yet the Cape Breton public has been massively oversold on the concept as the only possible salvation of...

10 December, 2010
The Supreme Court of Canada refusal to hear the Cape Breton Regional Municipality's equalization lawsuit was not as predictable as the rising of the sun this morning. But it was close. The lawsuit was cynical ploy by a mayor who likes to posture as a scrapper for the little guy, but refuses to do the hard work needed to reach political solutions to the little guy's problems.
  • Contrary to popular belief, even a total victory for CBRM would not have brought the municipality a single dime. It didn't even ask for money.
  • In any case, the lawsuit had no chance of success. Aside from Mayor John Morgan and his pricey Toronto constitutional lawyer, Contrarian has been unable to find a single lawyer who thought it had any chance of success.
  • Although the case suffered a mercifully early death—it was thrown out before trial—the mayor's insistence on appealing to the highest court in the land frittered away at least $500,000 in legal bills, and wasted three five years that could better have been spent seeking a political solution. During that time, CBRM ran up another $60 million $100 million in debt its citizens cannot afford.
  • The mayor now says he will seek a political solution, but he is playing a weaker hand, having demonstrated that his constitutional claims lack legal validity.
I believe the municipality has a case for greater provincial assistance in meeting basic service needs. I hope the Dexter Government, financially strapped as it is, gives the problem a fair hearing. But the mayor's legal adventure not only delayed a solution, it encouraged the worst impulses of Cape Breton's culture of dependency, and it reinforced the rest of the world's weary stereotype of Cape Bretoners as people with their hands out. In all these respects, it did a disservice to the very citizens Morgan claims to champion. Elaboration after the jump.

18 December, 2009

Jane Purves writes: I'm amazed that a man who has been mayor, i.e., in the higher echelons of the establishment, for what? ten years? can still get away with being considered anti-establishment....

16 November, 2009

Extortion. That's how the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia obtained the money it would be blocked from using by a government bill introduced in the legislature Tuesday. Liberal leader Stephen McNeil should think hard before crying victim. Justice Minister Ross Landry, who introduced the bill, suggested the Liberals give the tainted funds to charity. A better idea would be to give it back to the provincial treasury, because that's who they stole it from. McNeil may think voters' memories are too short to remember the details, but a few of us old coots are still around to remind them. The money in question came...

20 October, 2009

I've criticized the NDP's carbon subsidy (here, here, and here,), but I understand the value of keeping campaign promises, even dumb ones. In my contrary view, public cynicism about politicians is so deep, it threatens to destroy the minimal level of public trust democracy needs to survive. This may be why the Tories and the Parliamentary Press Gallery have been so successful at drumming up absurd faux-outrage at the prospect of a fall election. So even as two of the Dexter government's promises (keeping all rural emergency rooms open and using tax rebates to encourage electricity consumption) make me shudder, I...

29 September, 2009
Bruce Wark's defense of the NDP subsidy on dirty, coal-fired electricity as a way to help the poor drew fire from several readers. In a minute, one reader corrects a factual error that tripped up both Wark and Contrarian. But what most objected to what is we might call The Wark Principle:
You don’t tax necessities, then ask poor people to apply for rebates. That’s why we don’t tax groceries. How is electricity any different?
Contrarian reader Martin MacKinnon thinks Wark's objection to taxing necessities is ill-considered:
There are indeed far too many Nova Scotians who can ill afford the necessities of life. However, why should the rest of us benefit from their poverty? Wark seems to miss an important point. If those of us (including Wark and I) who could well afford to, do not pay tax on power, then governments who need to pay for things like health care and education will have to collect those taxes elsewhere. We need tax breaks for the necessities of life to be targeted at those who need help, not at the rest of us who don't.
After the jump, a more vehement reader, and a factual correction.
29 September, 2009

Civil servants are happy with the Dexter Government's methodical approach to policy because ministers are listening carefully to policy advice and deliberating before acting. But the issues keep coming, whether government's ready to act or not. The risk of Dexter's approach is that ministers may fall into reactive mode, moving from crisis to crisis rather than driving the new government's policy agenda. We have already seen Health Minister Maureen MacDonald struggling with the discovery that she cannot wish away the problem of rural emergency room closures, as she and the party assured voters they could during the election. (More on this soon.) Today,...

30 July, 2009
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