A cautious Contrarian reader writes: A friendly caution about taking pictures inside the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority pre-board screening area: If noticed, likely to attract unwanted security attention. Noted — but isn't this just further evidence that the real purpose of security theater is not to keep Canadians safe but to buttress the puffed-up functionaries charged with upholding these useless, colossally wasteful procedures? [caption id="attachment_2591" align="alignwrap" width="545" caption="Left: Stanfield International Airport 7 a.m., October 15. The security queue extends past the Clearwater Seafoods kiosk to the Air Canada check-in counter. Right: Half and hour later, inside the CATSA security zone. "][/caption] The overwhelming evidence...

18 October, 2009

Contrarian's old friend Ivan Smith—retired teacher, railway buff, and citizen watchdog—writes to decry the inexplicable removal from Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis's official website of the brief biographies of former L-Gs it once contained: Nowadays there is a simple list of the previous office-holders, showing names, dates of service, and nothing else. Contrast this sparse treatment with the list that was available in 2005. At first glance, the two look similar, but there is a crucial difference. In the website's 2005 list, each name was a link to a brief but informative biographical note about that Lieutenant Governor or Governor. In the...

09 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

A few weeks ago, I posted a critique of an opinion piece in the August 25 edition of AllNovaScotia.com [subscription required] by Prof. Larry Hughes of the Dalhouse University's Computer Engineering Department. Hughes is currently toiling as a visiting professor of Global Energy Systems at Uppsala University in Sweden. Shockingly, Contrarian is not yet daily reading in that particular corner of Scandinavia, so he only recently learned of my comments. Hughes writes: Contrary to what you have written, [my article in AllNovaScotia.com] has nothing to with NSP's existing 2010 or 2013 requirements.  The article is about NSP's new 25% renewables...

28 September, 2009

Jeff Pinhey suggests Nova Scotia take a page from the "IMBY syndrome" he observed on while riding the Train à Grande Vitesse from Paris to Amsterdam. The Dutch, who arguably know as much about windmills as anyone, choose to put their power generating ones in places where there already is a lot of background noise:  along a train line and urban freeway.  This is one of what must have been 20 that followed the rail line. Probably can't even tell they make a noise here. I find it puzzling that we seem to be forcing our windmills into areas as remote as...

16 September, 2009

Alistair Watt writes: The negative effects of living next to a wind power generating station have been known for some time. Consequently, to label opposition to them on that basis as NIMBY is unfair. Not In Anyone's Back Yard (NIABY) would be more appropriate. OK, let's review. We have to do something about electrical generation in Nova Scotia, because we currently burn the dirtiest possible fuel, coal, to produce about 75 percent of our power, and greenhouse gasses pose a grave and urgent risk to the future of the planet.  However: We can't use hydro, because there are no big rivers left to...

16 September, 2009

Two weeks ago, AllNovaScotia.com, the excellent online journal run by daughter-father team Caroline Wood and David Bentley, ran the latest in a series of occasional pieces by Larry Hughes, a computer engineering coordinator at Dalhousie University. Hughes is something of an energy policy gadfly. He expects energy will soon be in short supply globally, so he places a lot of emphasis on energy security, by which he appears to mean energy produced within Nova Scotia. Nevertheless, Hughes opposes Nova Scotia Power's plan to mix wood waste with coal to burn in its thermal generating plants. His piece, in the August 25 edition...

10 September, 2009
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